> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.ghost.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# excerpt

> Usage: `{{excerpt}}`

***

`{{excerpt}}` outputs content but strips all HTML. This is useful for creating excerpts of posts.

If the post’s `custom_excerpt` property is set, then the helper will always output the `custom_excerpt` content ignoring the `words` & `characters` attributes.

When both `html` and `custom_excerpt` properties are not set (for example, when member content gating strips the `html`) the output is generated from the post’s `excerpt` property.

The `excerpt` property is limited to the first 500 characters of the post’s plaintext output. To output a longer preview from the post body, use the [`{{content}}`](/themes/helpers/data/content/) helper instead.

You can limit the amount of text to output by passing one of the options:

`{{excerpt words="50"}}` will output 50 words of text, up to the generated excerpt length.

`{{excerpt characters="140"}}` will output 140 characters of text (rounding to the end of the current word).