Stage three of the path, the gift itself, runs through the choice between type and a photograph and the case for and against a joke. This is the page about words. Still choosing them? Retirement quotes collects the lines; what follows is what happens when you try to print one.
There is no quote field, and there is one line that can hold one
The print takes four typed lines: their name, their profession, their years of service and where they worked. None of them is labelled quote, and there is no separate box for a message. The fourth line, the one meant for where they worked, is the longest at 50 characters and the only one printed as you type it rather than forced into capitals. It sets in italics under the name, which is where a sentence would have to go.
Fifty characters is shorter than it sounds, and it's a hard limit. "Not the end of the road, the start of the open one" is fifty exactly. Anything longer gets cut off in the box before it can be printed, and the personalise page warns you while you type if a line is too long to read clearly at the size you have chosen.
So the trade is real: put a quote there and the workplace does not appear. For someone who gave thirty years to one school or one ward, that is a lot to hand over for a borrowed sentence.
When the quote is the right call
Two cases. The first is a line they actually said, often enough that the room would recognise it. A line they actually used is part of the same record as the years and the job, and it earns the space for the same reason they do. The second is a retirement with no single workplace to name, where the fourth line would otherwise sit empty.
Everything else is usually better served by the plain version. Career facts are unrepeatable; a quotation is available to everybody. That is why a well-known line reads as a card, and the workplace reads as a record.
What it costs either way
Wording makes no difference to the price. A4 costs £14.99, A3 £28.99, and 50x70cm £34.49. Framed at A3 and ready to hang it is £69.00; as a file it is £9.99, and on a mug £16.99. Every one of those figures includes UK delivery.
Where to put the longer words instead
A quote that won't fit in fifty characters has a better home in the card, which has no character limit and is read on the day by the people who understand it. What to write in a retirement card covers that, and retirement quotes lists the lines worth considering.
