[Windflier]

Many of these excerpts don’t fulfill the promise of the headline in the first 100 words. Sometimes not even in the larger excerpt at the FR link to the larger excerpt. Boy, that’s annoying.

I don't let that get in my way. If I like an article enough to post an excerpt as a new thread, I'll scan through it to find the heart of the piece, then carve that out to post here.

Too many writers have verbosis, and just love to read their own rambling thoughts. It sometimes takes them several paragraphs to get past the mental masturbation and interminable background setups, to get to the gist of what the article's about.

FR only allows a 300 word excerpt (from most news sources), so I'm very picky about what parts of an article I post.

[Responsibility2nd]

You two are correct. It annoys me to see the sloppy excerpting so many FReepers do when posting.

One trick I use quite often when posting an excerpt is to add the writer’s conclusion. Oftentimes the summary is a good wrap up of the major points.