The WordPress Excerpt is an optional summary or description of a post; in short, a post summary.

The Excerpt has two main uses:

1. It replaces the full content in RSS feeds when the option to display summaries is selected in Dashboard › Settings › Reading.
2. Depending on the WordPress theme, it can be displayed in places where quick summaries are preferable to full content:
   • Search results
   • Tag archives
   • Category archives
   • Monthly archives
   • Author archives