Truncate recent item titels

Hi all,

Im using a template that output’s title’s like this:

$output .= '<figcaption class="item-description"><h5>'.get_the_title().'</h5>';

Then i added some code to my functions.php:

/* Truncate Title */
function truncate_title($limit) {
	$title = get_the_title($post->ID);
	$getlength = strlen($title);
	$title = substr($title, 0, $limit);
	if ($getlength > $limit){
		$title .= '...';
	}
	echo $title;
}

And then changed the template to:

$output .= '<figcaption class="item-description"><h5>'.truncate_title(60).'</h5>';

This doesnt work (ofcourse).. can somebody help me with this?

Thanks in advance!