The **Str** class also provides three convenient methods for manipulating string capitalization: **upper**, **lower**, and **title**. These are more intelligent versions of the PHP [strtoupper](http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtoupper.php), [strtolower](http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtolower.php), and [ucwords](http://php.net/manual/en/function.ucwords.php) methods. More intelligent because they can handle UTF-8 input if the [multi-byte string](http://php.net/manual/en/book.mbstring.php) PHP extension is installed on your web server. To use them, just pass a string to the method:
echo Str::lower('I am a string.');
echo Str::upper('I am a string.');
echo Str::title('I am a string.');
<a name="limits"></a>
## Word & Character Limiting
#### Limiting the number of characters in a string: