Excerpts are used in WordPress as short summaries of posts and pages.
If you do not manually set an excerpt, WordPress will attempt to create one automatically from the first paragraph or so of the post/page content. However, this is not usually the best text, and you can usually write a better text by hand.
Where are excerpts used?
Depending on the theme, they are typically used for:
- the ‘teaser’ text on blog articles:
- the description text on menus of pages:
- meta descriptions on pages for SEO
Editing the excerpt
Unfortunately WordPress hides the excerpt box by default when you edit a page/post.
You can enable the Excerpt box in the ‘screen options’ drop-down found at the top-right of the editor screen:
Then ensure that ‘excerpt’ is ticked:
The excerpt box will then appear on the editing screen, usually near the bottom, below the main editing area:
Some themes also have the option to set a short title, which is typically used in the same situations where an excerpt would be used. This can be helpful when you want a longer, more descriptive title on the page itself, but a shorter title when it is linked to from other pages.