Title: excerpt question
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# excerpt question

 *  Anonymous
 * [21 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/)
 * the following is the definition that wp gave about excerpt but it is still not
   very clear to me. can someone explan this to me? thanks
    Excerpt This field gives
   you the ability to manually craft a summary or description of your post. This
   will be used as the description for the post in the RSS feeds, and will utilized
   in the future for any place where a short excerpt of the post is necesarry, such
   as search results or monthly archives. If you don’t put anything here an excerpt
   will be automatically generated from the first number of words from your post
   itself. You can access this field using the template tag the_excerpt(). This 
   should not be confused with extended entry functionality.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

 *  [TechGnome](https://wordpress.org/support/users/techgnome/)
 * (@techgnome)
 * [21 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91696)
 * In the Advance Edit of the WPAdmin area, there’s an additional field called Excerpt
   that you can fill in. It’s can be used for different things. Mostly it’s used
   to provide a synopsis about the post. I use it as a sort of mini-intro or tag
   line for the post — well I used to… I haven’t put it back into my current template.
   
   TG
 *  Thread Starter Anonymous
 * [21 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91701)
 * TG…
    so what goes into the excerpt does not show up with your post?
 *  [TechGnome](https://wordpress.org/support/users/techgnome/)
 * (@techgnome)
 * [21 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91707)
 * No, not automatically. There’s a separate call the_excerpt(); that displays the
   excerpt. Now, that’s provided you’ve entered an excerpt. On those occasions where
   you don’t enter an excerpt then a portion of the begining of the post is returned
   as the excerpt.
    TG
 *  [guacamolequeen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guacamolequeen/)
 * (@guacamolequeen)
 * [21 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91806)
 * How do I set the number of words in the excerpt? I have not entered an excerpt
   for each post but would like to use it to display, say, the first 20 words of
   a post. How do I do this?
 *  [TechGnome](https://wordpress.org/support/users/techgnome/)
 * (@techgnome)
 * [21 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91808)
 * Funny you should ask this…. I was just in the function that does this. Unfortunatly
   it can’t be set by option or by a parameter passed in. It can (at least as of
   1.2Mingus) only be set by modifying the code.
    Open wp-includes/template-functions-
   post.php … find the line get_the_excerpt — it’s a function, so if yo usearch 
   specificaly for “function get_the_excerpt” you’ll find it. In it is the following
   line: `$excerpt_length = 120;` Change the 120 to the number of words you would
   like to have displayed. Save it. And that’s it. If you want finer control, let
   me know, I’ve got a plugin, that with a little bit of tweaking can return a specific
   number of characters, words or even sentences (and paragraphs too I think). TG
 *  [Beel](https://wordpress.org/support/users/beel/)
 * (@beel)
 * [21 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91810)
 * You can easily change the function and use “echo get_the_excerpt(true, ’20’)”
   by deleting:
    $excerpt_length = 120; and change the function to: function get_the_excerpt(
   $fakeit = true, $excerpt_length = 120)
 *  [guacamolequeen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guacamolequeen/)
 * (@guacamolequeen)
 * [21 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91827)
 * Thanks, guys… I used Techgnome’s suggestion and my site’s looking much better.
 *  [oeschger](https://wordpress.org/support/users/oeschger/)
 * (@oeschger)
 * [21 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91973)
 * Hi. Since we’re on the question of excerpt tweaking, is there some easy way to
   disable them altogether–to publish the content in the archives, specifically,
   rather than the excerpt? I really need the HTML markup to stay in the arhive 
   pages (and perhaps also in the feeds, etc.) Thanks!!
 *  [nickm](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nickm/)
 * (@nickm)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91983)
 * Hey all, on this same topic, is there any way to create some sort of call in 
   the admin that automatically populates the excerpt box with X number of words
   or characters?
 *  [Lorelle](https://wordpress.org/support/users/lorelle/)
 * (@lorelle)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91984)
 * I think you just read the instructions in this thread.
 * If you want more than the default 120 words, change 120 to what you want. Want
   less, change 120 to less.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

The topic ‘excerpt question’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 10 replies
 * 7 participants
 * Last reply from: [Lorelle](https://wordpress.org/support/users/lorelle/)
 * Last activity: [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excerpt-question/#post-91984)
 * Status: not resolved

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