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the_great_tumblr_purge2025-04-26 04:23 am
soc_puppet) wrote in the_great_tumblr_purge2025-04-26 04:23 am
Cut Tag Basics
It's time to talk about Cut Tags, Dreamwidth's version of "Read More"s!
I'm going to start by demonstrating one, and I'm going to ask you not to click the actual "read more" text for now, so I can demonstrate one of the properties of cut tags. This should be the first post atnewcomers or the_great_tumblr_purge for April 26th, 2025, so if you've been linked to the post itself, please visit the archive for that date, instead!
I'm hoping you're reading this because you clicked on the right-pointing arrow there, or clicked the post link or a cut tag after reading the rest, because otherwise things might get slightly confusing!
That's a cut tag. One of the neat things is that you can put whatever text you want there, instead of just "Read More". The thing I want you to pay attention to, though, is that little arrow next to it:
You know how, on Tumblr, sometimes when you click a "Read More", the link will take you to directly to the page of the post, and sometimes it'll just unfold whatever is under the "Read More" so it shows up on your dash? I'm sure there's some logic to which one it is somewhere, but I have yet to really figure it out. (Not that I've been trying, mind.)
Dreamwidth has it codified so you know what's going to do what: The text itself will take you into the post, anchored to where the cut tag/Read More starts, while the arrow beside the cut tag will unfold the post for you. If you want to read the contents of a post, but don't feel like clicking away from your reading page to do so, click on that little arrow right there!
But wait, there's more! Somewhere on your page layout you might see a section that says, "Expand Cut Tags", with double right-pointing triangles and double down-pointing triangles. Click on the double-down triangles, and all cut tags on your reading page will be automatically opened for you! Pretty neat trick, right? That includes what's in the next bit...
This time, please click on that triangle there: Oh? What's this?
It's a nested cut tag! That's right, you can nest cut tags inside each other! This only works when readers have opened up the top-level cut tag, though; if they click through to the post proper, all of the cut tags will be open, including any nested tags. So if you're using nested tags to keep something secret, you might want to try a different approach. Like Details/Summary HTML tags, or making the font and background the same color.
And another one!From slapping this post on example_comm, just to make sure everything works, it's looking like custom text doesn't show up in nested cut tags, which is a pity. Okay, cancel that, I must have been doing something wrong last night? Honestly, this is something I'm pretty okay with being wrong about 😂
You might notice the left-pointing triangle at the end of both of those paragraphs now, as well as at the end of the next paragraph; if you click that, it will collapse the cut back down, hiding the text again. Closing arrows appear in the order that cuts appear, so clicking on the closing arrows above will close only those two cuts, while clicking on the closing arrow at the end of the next paragraph will close the top-level tag that both of the nested tags are under. So it closes the whole thing! You can also re-click the arrow next to the cut text to collapse the cut back down.
Another important thing to notice is that the custom text in the cut tag doesn't get copied into the post itself; if you include something you think is important in the cut text that adds to the rest of the post, you should probably include a copy of it directly after the cut text, as well. For example, when I post fics on here, I put the title of the fic in the cut text, and then repeat it after the cut text, so it's easier to find.
You may also have noticed at this point that cut tags on Dreamwidth can be closed. No more putting the entire remainder of a post under a Read More; you can put the long essay under there, and leave the TL;DR out at the end! This also means you can also include multiple cut tags in a single post, not just one. And not just the nested kind, either; just be careful when using nested cuts to make sure to close all of the ones you want closed, so any text you want on the outside doesn't get caught on the inside!
Etiquette-wise, Dreamwidth users (DWenizens?) tend to apply cut tags to posts that get a little longer, and to hide images that are more than, say, 800 pixels wide. The latter is a holdover from when bandwidth was a lot worse, though last I knew, some places were still running on dial-up, and it's polite to remember them, as well. And both are good for not turning your subscribers' reading page into Color of the Sky. If you've got a post that's more than a couple thousand words long or has a bunch of really big images, you might want to consider a cut tag. Writing that's more than a few hundred words or a dozen lines long (in terms of poetry) is a good choice to put under a cut tag, as are image posts that have multiple large images (unless you're using preview thumbnails).Honestly, this post is long enough that I want to put more of it under a cut tag, but it would mess up the demo...
That's all I can think of about cut tags at the moment; if there's something I missed or something you have questions about, feel free to bring it up in the comments!
Edit:ysabetwordsmith has some concrete advice about when and where to use cut tags!
I'm going to start by demonstrating one, and I'm going to ask you not to click the actual "read more" text for now, so I can demonstrate one of the properties of cut tags. This should be the first post at
newcomers or the_great_tumblr_purge for April 26th, 2025, so if you've been linked to the post itself, please visit the archive for that date, instead!I'm hoping you're reading this because you clicked on the right-pointing arrow there, or clicked the post link or a cut tag after reading the rest, because otherwise things might get slightly confusing!
That's a cut tag. One of the neat things is that you can put whatever text you want there, instead of just "Read More". The thing I want you to pay attention to, though, is that little arrow next to it:
You know how, on Tumblr, sometimes when you click a "Read More", the link will take you to directly to the page of the post, and sometimes it'll just unfold whatever is under the "Read More" so it shows up on your dash? I'm sure there's some logic to which one it is somewhere, but I have yet to really figure it out. (Not that I've been trying, mind.)
Dreamwidth has it codified so you know what's going to do what: The text itself will take you into the post, anchored to where the cut tag/Read More starts, while the arrow beside the cut tag will unfold the post for you. If you want to read the contents of a post, but don't feel like clicking away from your reading page to do so, click on that little arrow right there!
But wait, there's more! Somewhere on your page layout you might see a section that says, "Expand Cut Tags", with double right-pointing triangles and double down-pointing triangles. Click on the double-down triangles, and all cut tags on your reading page will be automatically opened for you! Pretty neat trick, right? That includes what's in the next bit...
This time, please click on that triangle there: Oh? What's this?
It's a nested cut tag! That's right, you can nest cut tags inside each other! This only works when readers have opened up the top-level cut tag, though; if they click through to the post proper, all of the cut tags will be open, including any nested tags. So if you're using nested tags to keep something secret, you might want to try a different approach. Like Details/Summary HTML tags, or making the font and background the same color.
And another one!
example_comm, just to make sure everything works, it's looking like custom text doesn't show up in nested cut tags, which is a pity.You might notice the left-pointing triangle at the end of both of those paragraphs now, as well as at the end of the next paragraph; if you click that, it will collapse the cut back down, hiding the text again. Closing arrows appear in the order that cuts appear, so clicking on the closing arrows above will close only those two cuts, while clicking on the closing arrow at the end of the next paragraph will close the top-level tag that both of the nested tags are under. So it closes the whole thing! You can also re-click the arrow next to the cut text to collapse the cut back down.
Another important thing to notice is that the custom text in the cut tag doesn't get copied into the post itself; if you include something you think is important in the cut text that adds to the rest of the post, you should probably include a copy of it directly after the cut text, as well. For example, when I post fics on here, I put the title of the fic in the cut text, and then repeat it after the cut text, so it's easier to find.
You may also have noticed at this point that cut tags on Dreamwidth can be closed. No more putting the entire remainder of a post under a Read More; you can put the long essay under there, and leave the TL;DR out at the end! This also means you can also include multiple cut tags in a single post, not just one. And not just the nested kind, either; just be careful when using nested cuts to make sure to close all of the ones you want closed, so any text you want on the outside doesn't get caught on the inside!
Etiquette-wise, Dreamwidth users (DWenizens?) tend to apply cut tags to posts that get a little longer, and to hide images that are more than, say, 800 pixels wide. The latter is a holdover from when bandwidth was a lot worse, though last I knew, some places were still running on dial-up, and it's polite to remember them, as well. And both are good for not turning your subscribers' reading page into Color of the Sky. If you've got a post that's more than a couple thousand words long or has a bunch of really big images, you might want to consider a cut tag. Writing that's more than a few hundred words or a dozen lines long (in terms of poetry) is a good choice to put under a cut tag, as are image posts that have multiple large images (unless you're using preview thumbnails).
That's all I can think of about cut tags at the moment; if there's something I missed or something you have questions about, feel free to bring it up in the comments!
Edit:
ysabetwordsmith has some concrete advice about when and where to use cut tags!