I just received a massive (multi-paragraph, spanning the entire height of the screen) notification that confused me until I realized that it was the end of a huge message from a friend.

I'm kinda taken aback by the fact that Mint devs didn't set notifications to display the first words, instead of the last words, of gigantic notifications. Is there a way to configure them to present themselves accordingly?

Which app is this? And is it the default desktop environment? You should be able to right click the notifications icon in your toolbar and configure it. Have you tried that?

Sorry, I'm on Cinnamon, and yeah, I've made no changed to the notif system of which I'm aware. It was just a friend's lengthy WhatsApp Web message from my browser; I think it was like a code dump or something. The icon's configuration settings don't specify the position of the visible text, as far as I know; it seems to always be set to prioritize showing the bottom of the message and clipping off the start instead of vice versa (which seems so backwards, especially for an industry leader like Cinnamon...).