I searched for this function all over. The solution is so simple, you will not believe it when I tell you. But the WordPress documentation makes it sound so difficult.

First I looked in their Docs at http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts > There it says:

Excerpt

A summary or brief teaser of your posts featured on the front page of your site as well as on the category, archives, and search non-single post pages. Note that the Excerpt does not usually appear by default. It only appears in your post if you have changed the index.php template file to display the Excerpt instead of the full Content of a post. If so, WordPress will automatically use the first 55 words of your post as the Excerpt or up until the use of the More Quicktag mark. If you use an Explicit Excerpt, this will be used no matter what. For more information, see Excerpt.

If you go to the link suggested, it took me to http://codex.wordpress.org/Glossary#Excerpt and says:

An excerpt should not be confused with the teaser which refers to the first 55 words of the post‘s content. When typing a long post you can insert the <!--more--> Quicktag after a few sentences to act as a cut-off point. When the post is displayed, the teaser, followed by a hyperlink (such as Read the rest of this entry…), are displayed. Your visitor can then click on that link to see the full version of your post. The Template Tag the_content() can be used to display the teaser.

An excerpt is a condensed description of your blog post and refers to the summary entered in the Excerpt field of the Write Post SubPanel (see Advanced Editing). The excerpt is used to describe your post in RSS feeds and is typically used in displaying search results. The excerpt is sometimes used in displaying the Archives and Category views of your posts. The Template Tag the_excerpt() can be used to access the contents of this field.

If you are not very technical and you need an understandable solution, this is what all above jargon means:
Write or edit a new post.
At the place where you want to cut your post short in order to display the excerpt on your category page, look at the first arrow in the picture below. Press that button. A line will appear like at the second arrow. The click save or update. And that is it. This is where it will cut the topic in order to summarize it. It is that easy, I promise.

One Response to “How to add Excerpts in WordPress”

1. Dhane says:

   April 16, 2009 at 21:11

   Thanks Pieter. That WordPress codex is kind of confusing. But thanks again for posting this. It’s a life saver.