Excerpt or full content
Appearance → Customize → Blog → Post text.
| Choice | |
|---|---|
| Excerpt (default) | The trimmed summary, ending in a “Continue reading” link |
| Full content | The whole post, stopping at a more tag when one is set |
Excerpt
Keeps a listing scannable. A visitor sees ten posts on a screen and picks one. This is what a blog listing is for, and it is the default.
The length is per display mode — 60 words stacked, 35 list, 20 grid — and you can override all three with one number.
If a post has a hand-written excerpt (the Excerpt box in the post editor’s sidebar) that text is used verbatim and is never trimmed. Writing your own excerpts is the single biggest improvement you can make to a listing: an auto-trim cuts mid-sentence, a written one is a pitch.
Full content
Prints the whole post under each title, styled exactly as it is on the single post — blocks, images, quotes and all.
This is the old-school personal blog: the front page is the reading experience, and clicking through is for permalinks and comments. It works when your posts are short. It does not when they are 2,000 words each, at which point the front page is a single post plus scrolling.
The more tag is your friend here
Add a More block where you want the front page to stop, and WordPress prints only the text above it, followed by a “Continue reading” link. You get a hand-controlled teaser of any length, with the full post one click away.
That works whichever setting you pick: in full-content mode the tag is the cut, and
in excerpt mode a post with a more tag still shows only its teaser.
Where it does not apply
Search results always keep the excerpt. A page of whole posts is the opposite of what someone scanning results wants.
The related toggles
Two other Blog settings interact with this:
- Display post text on blog — untick to print no body text at all, titles and images only. A tight index.
- Display “Continue reading” link — only shown while Post text is Excerpt, since nothing is trimmed in full-content mode. Untick and a trimmed excerpt ends in a plain ellipsis.