How can you create an excerpt before a post?

Hi All,

I am trying to make my blog behave so that there is a small excerpt of the actual post, and then once you click on the post it displays the full thing. I am using WP 2.04.

I have tried filling in a blurb into the “excerpt” field, and have filled out information for the actual post. The problem is that nothing from the excerpt field is actually displayed, and the full body of the content from the blog post is visible on the index page. Shouldn’t it just show the excerpt if I enter something in the exerpt field?