aligning blog article layout

Hi Tom, I have chosen to us a 2 column layout for my homepage displays using "Your latest posts" option.. I have chosen the Masonry Grid option..

But because my "manual excerpts" are of different lengths, it is not all aligned.. Can you advise me a code to use so that all post excerpts have fixed number of words even if I have a manual excerpt..??

For example if my manual excerpt on one post has 100 words and another post has 78 words, can i restrict manual excerpt length to say 50 words on all posts..??

Also the same thing can the meta tag box (the grey box in the screenshot - ) also start at same length so that the meta and excerpt will be same length and title can be different length, so it is all symmetrical..