What is an Excerpt in WordPress?
In WordPress, an excerpt is a brief summary of a post or page that lets visitors preview the content without showing the entire article. Instead of displaying full posts on your blog archive or category pages, WordPress shows concise snippets, usually the first 55 words, helping readers quickly scan entries.
Behind the scenes, the word excerpt comes from the Latin excerptum, which is closely related to the term Latin excerptus (“something picked out”) and its past participle excerptus (“having been selected”), reflecting how you hand‑pick or automatically generate a small portion of your content to pique interest.
Moreover, using excerpts improves your site’s readability, giving them an essential meaning in the context of content presentation. It also keeps layouts tidy and provides search engines a focused summary that boosts SEO while guiding readers to click through and read the full post.
Purpose and Benefit of Using an Excerpt in a Blog Post
Excerpts distill your full article into a compelling snapshot, often revealing the story’s core. , instantly communicating its value to busy readers. By showcasing only the most relevant points, they guide visitors toward deeper engagement and keep your layout clean and navigable.
- Enhanced User Experience: Visitors can skim multiple posts, deciding which story or article to read.
- Clean Design: Excerpts maintain a tidy layout, avoiding long blocks of text on archive or homepage templates.
- Improved SEO: Crafting a keyword-rich excerpt helps search engines index your site more effectively.
- Faster Load Times: In terms of performance, displaying a short excerpt instead of full content reduces page loading times and bandwidth usage.
- Content Curation: Featured excerpts can highlight special interviews, play reviews, or musical composition summaries.
How an Excerpt Works in WordPress
WordPress can auto‑generate excerpts from the first 55 words of your post or let you craft a custom teaser in the Excerpt field. This dual approach ensures every archive, search result, or widget displays a concise, inviting preview of your content.
- Automatic Excerpts: If you don’t manually define one, WordPress will grab the initial 55 words, stripped of HTML tags, to serve as the default excerpt.
- Manual Excerpts: Authors can write a tailored excerpt in Gutenberg or Classic Editor via the Excerpt field.
- Customization via Code: Modify with the excerpt_length filter in your theme’s functions.php. Or, use the excerpt_more filter to change “… [Read More]” to a custom link or text.
- Plugin Options: Plugins like Advanced Excerpt or Excerpt Editor let you control word count, HTML is allowed, and more; no coding is required.
Example of an Excerpt in Action
From news sites to portfolios, excerpts adapt to any context, teasing key insights in just a sentence or two. Real‑world usage illustrates how short, targeted summaries can boost click‑through rates and highlight your best work.
- News Sites: Tease past participle articles with a one- or two-sentence excerpt.
- Business Blogs: Present select passages of case studies or white papers.
- Portfolio: Showcase a chapter or portion of a design document or speech transcript.
- Musical Composition Blogs: Offer a short excerpt of score analysis or composer interviews.
Customizing an Excerpt for Your Site
Whether you tweak length via filters in functions.php or install a plugin, WordPress gives you full control over how much text appears. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for writers who want to maintain their style. Additionally, personalized excerpts let you maintain brand voice and fine‑tune user experience without touching a line of code.
- Enable Manual Excerpt Field: Open the post editor. Click Screen Options (Classic) or the three dots (Gutenberg). Check the Excerpt to reveal the field.
- Adjust Excerpt Length
function my_excerpt_length( $length ) {
return 30; // number of words
}
add_filter( ‘excerpt_length’, ‘my_excerpt_length’ );
- Change “Read More” Text
function my_excerpt_more( $more ) {
return ‘… <a href=”‘ . get_permalink() . ‘”>Continue Reading</a>’;
}
add_filter( ‘excerpt_more’, ‘my_excerpt_more’ );
- Use Plugins: For non‑developers, excerpt plugins let you tweak details, length, and formatting without editing code.
Related Words and Concepts
Understanding terms like “extract,” “summary,” and “meta description” helps distinguish excerpts from similar features. Grasping these nuances ensures you use the right tool for every content‑preview need.
- Extract: To clarify, an extract is similar to an excerpt but can imply a longer work or larger document.
- Summary: Often used interchangeably; a broader term.
- Meta Description: On the other hand, a meta description is a search-engine snippet; it’s not the same as a WordPress excerpt, but may overlap in function and purpose.
- Read More Tag: Breaks posts in content loops; separate from the excerpt feature.
- Custom Post Types: Excerpts apply to types like products, events, or papers by default.
Best Practices & Tips for Writing an Effective Excerpt
Well‑crafted excerpts hook readers with clear, benefit‑driven language and naturally integrated keywords. You set accurate expectations and maximize engagement by keeping them concise and on topic.
- Keep It Brief: Aim for 20–40 words under the default 55-word limit.
- Hook Readers: Use compelling language, intriguing facts, or questions.
- Avoid Repetition: Don’t just copy the first sentence of your post.
- Include Keywords Naturally: Sprinkle in terms like “what is excerpt,” “blog post,” or “website” where relevant without forced stuffing.
- Stay Relevant: Your excerpt should accurately reflect the central passage or portion of the post.
- Mind Tone & Style: Match the voice of your whole article to set correct expectations.
Common Use Case for WordPress Excerpts
Whether you’re creating content for tutorials, film reviews, or interview highlights, excerpts offer versatile previews that fit any niche. As a result, they serve as the perfect gateway to your full content, regardless of format or industry.
- Educational Blogs: Offer previews of tutorials or paper reviews.
- Entertainment Sites: Show clip summaries or film reviews.
- Professional Portfolios: Highlight play synopses or musical composition analyses.
- News & Interviews: Present excerpts from author interviews or speech keynotes.
Conclusion
A WordPress excerpt is more than a few lines of text; it can effectively summarize an entire book. Originating from the Latin word “excerptum,” excerpts help shape how readers discover and engage with your content. By using this feature effectively, you can enhance user experience, improve site design, and boost your SEO with custom excerpts.
Whether quoting a book or musical composition, summarizing a film, or teasing a lengthy white paper, well-crafted excerpts ensure your site visitors and search engines are hooked. They often act like a passage inviting deeper reading before reading the whole piece.
If you’re ready to elevate this further, your WordPress site and its excerpts to the next level, Seahawk’s expert team can help you craft compelling previews that drive clicks, engagement, and conversions.