Meta and Formatting - Read more tags
This little guide almost solely applies to Tumblr where you can actually choose to put in a read more tag to shorten your post.
Why is a read more tag so important?
I always encourage writers to use the read more option because it can be quite a drag to scroll past a 7k word long story, especially if people reblog your story often and it pops up on people’s dashes more than once.
It’s not only more convenient for people scrolling through their dash, but whenever someone clicks the read more tag they will automatically be sent to your blog. And that’s what we all want, right? People visiting your blog!
Personally I use the rule: if a story is longer than 500 words, jam in that read more tag. If your summary and other meta is to point it will lure in readers anyway.
How to put a read more tag in your post?
First of all make sure you’re on an empty line in your post. The line has to be completely empty, including spaces, otherwise you won’t get the pop-up menu.
A little menu to the right will appear.
Click the little square with three dots on the right.
If you have done it correctly you will see a curly line with the words ‘Keep reading’:
If you hover over the line with our mouse a red dot with a cross to the right will appear. If you click that you can remove the read more tag. You can also click and hold the read more to drag it up or down, replacing it in your post.
My line is empty but I don’t get the menu...
In that case you’ve got the heading option turned on. The little cursor will be taller than normal. Just type a single letter, select it and turn off the header option. Delete the letter and the menu should appear again.
I’m on mobile/the app
In this case you won’t be able to put on a read more tag in your post and you’ll have to log in on computer to put the tag in. A serious loss in my opinion, and something I’d like to see Tumblr fix, because mobile traffic is higher than computer traffic these days.
