Limit Amount of characters to show on post preview?

Hi there, at the moment ive managed to code a news section for new posts here – http://www.soundrealmstudios.com/artists/phrak/

I want to try and edit the post so that rather than it showing the ENTIRE post and stretching the page, i want it to show a certain amount of characters and have a “Read More” link or something and then it takes you to the post.

What can i add to my code for this to work? (Thank you so much in advance)

<div id="news">

					<?php
						$news = new WP_Query('cat=6&numberposts=5');
  						while ($news->have_posts()) : $news->the_post();
					?>

					<!-- begin post roll-->
					<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
					<div class="instru-content2">
						<?php the_content(); ?>
					</div>

					<?php endwhile; ?>
				</div>

I dont know what to add to limit the amount of characters to stop it from stretching the page… I also want to try and add a seperator so that you can plainly see the next post but ill tackle that at a later date (unless you guys feel generous with help!!) haha

thanks once more! 🙂