A companion function to the_short_content to return without any wpautop or echoing

get_short_content.php

function otm_get_short_content($length = 200) {

	$content = strip_shortcodes( strip_tags( get_the_content(), '<p><h2><h3><h4>' ) );

	if ( strlen( $content ) > $length ){
		return wpautop( substr( $content, 0, strpos( $content, ' ', $length ) ) . "..." );
	} else {
		return wpautop( $content );
	}

}