This falls into the category of “who knew?” or being brainwashed to think the WP way. For the past several years, I have always referred to the introductory text, the excerpt in WordPress, as either the excerpt or the lede. It turns out both are wrong, and I always had the feeling they were wrong. Today, I learned that this block of text, used to excite readers to continue, is called the standfirst.
Standfirst – also known as a subhead, rider, kicker, or bankhead, a standfirst summarizes the article and entices the reader to keep reading. It’s often used in online blog posts.
While the term excerpt works in the WordPress space because it auto-extracts an excerpt of the post, the field associated with it should be called the standfirst. On the other hand, the lede is the first paragraph of a story – hence, “don’t bury the lede.” In addition to using the terminology correctly, it is a great CSS class name that won’t easily be confused.
