Post excerpts explained
Learn what WordPress post excerpts are, how to write them, and where they appear on your site.
- Time
- 3 minutes per post
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- You’ll need
- Editor or Administrator access
An excerpt is a short summary of a blog post. It's a few sentences that give readers a taste of what the full article is about. Depending on your theme and plugins, excerpts can appear in blog post listings, search results, and social shares — they're often the first impression of your content.
Quick summary
When editing a post, open the Post settings sidebar and click Add an excerpt… to write a 1–3 sentence summary. If you leave it blank, WordPress automatically generates one from the first 55 words of your post content. Writing your own is almost always better.
What you'll need
- Editor or Administrator access to WordPress
What is an excerpt?
When visitors browse your blog, they typically see a list of posts — each with a title, maybe a featured image, and a short snippet of text. Depending on your theme, that snippet is the excerpt.
Excerpts can also be used by:
- SEO plugins — Yoast SEO and Rank Math can both use the excerpt in the meta description (text Google may show in its search results)
- Social media plugins — When sharing a post, some tools pull the excerpt for the preview text
- Email newsletters — If your site connects to a newsletter tool, the excerpt can become the post summary
How to add an excerpt to a post
Open the post you want to edit in the WordPress block editor.
Find the Excerpt setting in the Post settings sidebar on the right. (If the sidebar is closed, click the Settings icon at the top right.) Click Add an excerpt…, or Edit excerpt if the post already has one. If you can't see it, open the three-dot Options menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the editor, go to Preferences → General, and turn on Excerpt under Document settings.
Type your summary in the box that opens. Aim for 1–3 sentences — enough to give a real sense of what the post is about without giving everything away.
Click Save (or Publish for a new post) to save.
What makes a good excerpt?
A good excerpt is:
- Accurate — It reflects what's actually in the post
- Engaging — It makes someone want to read more
- Complete in itself — It reads as a proper sentence or two, not a cliffhanger sentence cut mid-thought
- About 155 characters or fewer if you're also using it as your SEO meta description (Yoast's recommendation) — though excerpt boxes typically allow more
Compare these two:
| Approach | Example |
|---|---|
| Auto-generated (cutting off the article) | "If you've ever wondered how to market your business on social media, you're not alone. Many business owners face the same…" |
| Hand-written excerpt | "Five practical social media tactics for small businesses — without needing a big budget or a full-time marketing team." |
The hand-written version is cleaner, more focused, and more compelling.
What happens if you don't write an excerpt?
If the excerpt field is empty, WordPress automatically creates one by taking the first 55 words (by default) of your post content. This "auto excerpt" often:
- Starts mid-thought if your post begins with a personal anecdote or scene-setting
- Gets cut off at an awkward point
- Doesn't highlight what's most valuable about the post
It works, but it's never as good as writing your own.
The more tag (<!--more-->)
Some themes show each post's full content on the blog and archive pages instead of an excerpt. On those themes, you can add a More block inside your post: only the content before it is shown on those pages, followed by a "Read More" link. If your theme shows excerpts on those pages instead, the More block is ignored and your excerpt is used.
SEO connection
Your SEO plugin (such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math) can use your excerpt as the meta description — the text that may be shown in Google search results. Both offer an excerpt variable for their description templates. If you've written a good excerpt, it can serve double duty.
For important pages, it's worth writing both a dedicated excerpt and a separate meta description in your SEO plugin. They can be the same, or you can tune the SEO description for search while keeping the excerpt focused on readability. See Editing SEO titles & descriptions.
Common questions
Where does the excerpt actually appear on my site?
It depends on your theme. On a standard blog listing page, the excerpt is the text shown below each post title. Some themes may hide excerpts or show the full post content instead. If you're unsure how your theme handles this, ask us.
How long should an excerpt be?
1–3 sentences is the sweet spot for most uses. Long enough to be informative, short enough to be scannable. If you plan to use it as a meta description too, Yoast recommends keeping it to about 155 characters or fewer.
Can I have excerpts on pages (not just posts)?
Not by default. WordPress turns on the Excerpt setting for posts only. A theme or plugin can add it to pages, so if you see an Excerpt setting when editing a page, your site has it turned on. Whether a page's excerpt is used anywhere depends on your theme and any SEO plugin settings. It's not as commonly needed for pages.
My excerpt is showing in Google results but I don't want it to — can I change that?
You can write a different meta description in your SEO plugin, which replaces the excerpt as your page's description. Note that Google sometimes writes its own snippet from your page content instead of using your description. See Editing SEO titles & descriptions.
Related guides
- How to write & publish a blog post
- Setting featured images
- Using categories & tags
- Editing SEO titles & descriptions
- Writing for the web
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