The article “excerpt” should be about this long so that it fills enough space to keep the thumbnail from trespassing into another article’s headline space. The “excerpt” should be either a real excerpt or a quick description. DON’T USE FIRST PERSON in the excerpt even if it’s in the article’s first few sentences.

By “about this long,” we mean the length of the preceding paragraph, not the length of this whole article. Don’t make it too short or too long (although too long is better than too short). The excerpt is not a mini-article.

WordPress will automatically generate an excerpt for you if you do not create one yourself. Just make sure the generated excerpt does not include first person language or anything that might sound like an endorsement, and make sure your article’s main content is longer than the excerpt. If your article is long enough, the automatically generated excerpt may be just fine.

Don’t include anything ad-like in the excerpt – e.g., “You can subscribe to Geek & Sundry at….”

Try to avoid including major spoilers in the excerpt.

HOW to edit an excerpt:

The Excerpt box appears under the Visual/HTML box where you edit the article. If you do not see an Excerpt box, go to the upper right and click Screen Options. Check “Excerpt”  up there and then you should start seeing an Excerpt box under the content editing box.

These guidelines and other policies are works in progress and are subject to amendments, revisions, corrections, deletions, and other edits.

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