# Hugo post summary
**URL:** https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-post-summary/20698
**Category:** support
**Created:** [September 10, 2019, 2:28pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-post-summary/20698 "2019-09-10T14:28:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Ilya\_Nemtsev](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ilya_Nemtsev)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2019, 2:28pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-post-summary/20698/1 "2019-09-10T14:28:10Z")
Hi friends,
I am trying to customize the summary that is displayed for my blog posts. It keeps using the first `some number` of characters. But, I want to use an image or some small html instead. I tried putting html inside `summary: "..."` in the article front matter, but this did nothing.
Any suggestions?
Leo
---
### Author:  [@bmackinney](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bmackinney)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2019, 3:31pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-post-summary/20698/2 "2019-09-10T15:31:12Z")
@Ilya_Nemtsev content summaries are automatically generated and accessed through the page .Summary variable. See [https://gohugo.io/content-management/summaries/](https://gohugo.io/content-management/summaries/).
{{ .Summary | safeHTML }} should do the trick. no summary frontmatter is necessary.
---
### Author:  [@Ilya\_Nemtsev](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ilya_Nemtsev)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2019, 4:44pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-post-summary/20698/3 "2019-09-10T16:44:19Z")
I updated my template and that did the trick!
Thank you @bmackinney
---
### Author:  [@ju52](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/ju52)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2019, 6:00pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-post-summary/20698/4 "2019-09-10T18:00:16Z")
I use sometimes
`{{ .Summary | plainify | chomp }}
`
bc .Summary breaks HTML elements (some time ago - not tested again)
---
### Author:  [@patdavid](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/patdavid)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2019, 9:28pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-post-summary/20698/5 "2019-09-20T21:28:13Z")
I’ve tried this but am still having some issues (sorry to post here - if I’m hijacking this thread please feel free to break out my post to a new topic).
If I use the automatically generated `{{ .Summary }}` all of the HTML is stripped from the output.
Is there any way to retain the HTML associated with the file being summarised?
For example, with a post markdown file with content like this at the beginning:
```auto
## First header
This is a first sentence _for example_.
This is a second sentence, new paragraph.
```
If I use the automatic `{{ .Summary }}` for this page, it renders as:
```auto
First header This is a first sentence for example. This is a second sentence, new paragraph.
```
(note: this also happens with `{{ .Summary | safeHTML }}`.
What I would expect to render is the HTML also:
```auto
First header
This is a first sentence for example.
This is a second sentence, new paragraph.
```
As a small work-around I’m using: `{{ .Content | safeHTML | truncate 500 }}`.
Where I truncate the full post by N characters (but this is not as nice as the autosummary - sometimes the break is in the middle of a sentence with ellipses).
related:
[https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/summary-strips-all-html-tags-regardless-of-length/2151](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/summary-strips-all-html-tags-regardless-of-length/2151)
---
### Author:  [@maiki](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/maiki)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2019, 11:37pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-post-summary/20698/6 "2019-09-20T23:37:17Z")