An excerpt is a short summary of a WordPress post. Many themes show it on your blog page, category archives and search results instead of the full article, along with a link to read more.
A good excerpt works like the blurb on the back cover of a book. It tells readers what the post is about and gives them a reason to click.
How does WordPress create an excerpt?
There are two kinds of excerpts in WordPress:
- Automatic excerpt: If you don't write one, WordPress takes the first 55 words of your post by default, strips the formatting and adds a bracketed ellipsis at the end.
- Manual excerpt: You write your own summary, and WordPress shows it exactly as you typed it.
Automatic excerpts are handy, but they often cut off mid-sentence or start with an intro that says nothing. A manual excerpt gives you full control.
How to add a manual excerpt
- First, open your post in the block editor.
- Now, open the settings sidebar and find the Excerpt option.
- Next, write a summary of one or two sentences.
- Finally, save or publish the post.
By default, the excerpt box is available for posts but not for pages. Developers can turn it on for pages with a small code snippet.
Whether excerpts appear on your blog page depends on your theme. Some themes always show the full post, while block themes let you add the Post Excerpt block to your templates.
Excerpts and your RSS feed
You can also decide what your feed shows. Go to Settings → Reading and set For each post in a feed, include to Excerpt instead of Full text. This way, feed readers see a short preview and visit your site for the rest.
Our lesson on WordPress reading settings explains the other options on that screen. I like to keep my excerpts between 25 and 40 words. That is short enough to scan but long enough to explain the post.
To sum up, an excerpt is the short teaser that invites readers into your post. That's it. Have a doubt about excerpts? Ask us in the comment section below.