Automatic summaries do not follow summaryLength

support
1

I am not sure if this is a bug or a misunderstanding on my part, but I will ask nonetheless.

I noticed my automatic summaries rarely ever cut paragraphs. My summaryLength was the default value, 70; so I put to 0, to tes if it was read at all: yes, no more summary. But then pretty much no matter what value I set, I get very long summaries, because of the very long paragraphs.One for instance clocked at 90 words.

hugo v0.164.0-ce2470e7012b5ab5fc4e10ebe4027e9f8d9e00dc linux/amd64 BuildDate=2026-07-06T16:39:30Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

2

I take this from memory, but the automatic summaries do not cut paragraphs (p). There’s some other summary options and also strings.Truncate that may help you.

3

That is a highly counter-intuitive behavior, and is not indicated in the documentation.
I guess not that many people use that feature ?
Yes I’ll cut it myself :slight_smile:

4

https://gohugo.io/configuration/all/#summarylength

I’ve written about the non-technical downside of automatic summaries before. In short, I don’t think they’re a great idea.

https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/mardown-not-rendering-in-summary/43349/6

5

at the paragraph boundary

I shall stand corrected. It is hard sometimes not to miss a fragment of a statement. I share your opinion too, I felt lazy.