Some blogs like to just show an excerpt of the post and then a link at the bottom of the blog post to view or read more. So how are they doing that? It’s easy!
First write your full blog post in the WordPress control panel or migrate from Word if that is what you do. At the place where you want you post to break, just put your cursor there. Then click the HTML tab at the top right of your blog post panel, just above the font control and hyperlink insertion menu.
Then where your cursor is located just paste in this code:
<!–more–>
When you go back to the Visual tab, to view your post, you will now see a dotted line where your post is to break. When you publish your blog WordPress will automatically add a link to read more and then take the reader to the exact section of the post on the new page.
Cool huh? A neat trick to use the excerpt function.
Okay now why don’t I use this on my own blog? Well I have found that typically the reader will not click in to read more on most blogs, they will simply read the next post and not click in unless they are REALLY interested in what you have written. So I do not use this feature on my own blog as I want to encourage readers to review my full content with minimal action on their part.
Why would a blog want to use this feature? Some blogs have so much content on the home page that to “look” less intimidating they will use the excerpt format. Sometimes to have a less cluttered look, and sometimes so they can get more content on the home page.