Comments on: What Length Should A Post Excerpt Be?

By: Marie

Marie — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:19:27 +0000

Thanks for the article! I just started using excerpts. It’s actually changed the way I am writing my posts. I agree, it needs to be in a logical place.

By: vip

vip — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 19:52:30 +0000

Thanks for the info,,, I love it

By: Katrina

Katrina — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 23:03:47 +0000

Well, I don’t think that there should be limits fora specific article. As long as its interesting and what you have written makes sense, that is just fine for me.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 23:00:56 +0000

I don’t think that there should be limits fora specific article. As long as its interesting and what you have written makes sense, that is just fine for me.

By: Michael Martin

Michael Martin — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 12:55:47 +0000

Kristarella – Putting it somewhere that makes sense is the most important tip of all I’d say. If that’s what you’re doing, you’re doing well.

Even on Pro Blog Design, the excerpt length does tend to vary a fair bit. I would never sacrifice good writing for the sake of getting a consistent length either. The tips I’ve listed here are the things I consider each time I choose my excerpt, but I don’t necessarily obey all of them with every post.

By: kristarella

kristarella — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:34:22 +0000

I used to be like Amy, but I think that’s because I was exposed to poor excerpting. I read one blog in particular that was consistent, as you said, but it was a consistent pain in the neck. They had an image and a tiny amount of text before the “click for more” so to read anything you had to click all over the place and the homepage felt confused.

Lately however I’ve seen longer excerpts that do pull me in and Im happy to click to read more.

Since you’ve posted about excerpts I’ve started using the more tag. I don’t do a lot of the things you’ve said here though. It terms of consistency, I generally put it at the end of 3 paragraphs, but those paragraphs might be fairly different lengths. I try to put it somewhere that makes sense, where people might want to continue reading.

Actually I think my main reason for using it is I don’t want to show really long posts on the front page…

By: Michael Martin

Michael Martin — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:36:32 +0000

Amy – Fair enough, but to comment, you have to click through anyway?

Steven – lol, thanks. It’s nice that the archives are finally growing to a point where I actually can link internally!

pablopabla – Nice system. :)

Dave – Sounds like you’re prepared at least. That means you will always have the option to change between the 2 very easily.

By: Dave S.

Dave S. — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 05:41:09 +0000

My blog is a photoblog. So I copy & paste the thumbnail of the picture and a small amount of text from the post into the excerpt area. I currently don’t use it anywhere on my site yet. If I can build some traffic, I may change my monthly archive page and categories page to use it. My home page is all full posts.

By: pablopabla

pablopabla — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:28:21 +0000

I usually allow at least two or three paragraphs before using the “More” tag found on the WP editor. I only use it when my post has at least 5 paragraphs of content.

By: Steven Snell

Steven Snell — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:30:20 +0000

Michael,
This is a very useful article for me as I have kind of been overlooking this. I really like the point you make about leaving a paragraph below a picture. That definitely helps with the visual layout of the blog front page.

Also, good use of internal links in this post. It’s nice to have several resources on the subject all just one click away.