# How can I keep post views on lists
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-keep-post-views-on-lists/254069
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [February 4, 2023, 6:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-keep-post-views-on-lists/254069 "2023-02-04T18:58:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ProjeDEV](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ProjeDEV)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2023, 6:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-keep-post-views-on-lists/254069/1 "2023-02-04T18:58:51Z")
Hi,
We have a poetry forum. In a single post, it looks normal like a poem, but the excerpt display view becomes a paragraph or combined text style on the homepage or category listings. The original post views are lost. I tried different things, different themes or the “topic list previews” plugin didn’t work. How can I show excerpts like poetry (e.g. first three lines or max lines with excerpt length) on homepage or specific category page.
Thanks for support.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2023, 7:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-keep-post-views-on-lists/254069/2 "2023-02-04T19:54:39Z")
You might check the value of SiteSetting `traditional markdown linebreaks`. The description reads: “Use traditional linebreaks in Markdown, which require two trailing spaces for a linebreak.”
That is a bit confusing, but I think that you have this checked and you want it unchecked. Or maybe I’m confused.
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### Author:  [@ProjeDEV](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ProjeDEV)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2023, 8:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-keep-post-views-on-lists/254069/3 "2023-02-04T20:23:08Z")
Thanks Jay, I tried but it didn’t work. I don’t know how but in the excerpt it combines all the sentences into one paragraph
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2023, 10:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-keep-post-views-on-lists/254069/4 "2023-02-04T22:52:41Z")
Hi Proje DEV! 🙂
Are you using [Topic List Excerpts](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic-list-excerpts/151520)?
I believe you need a plugin if you want to override it to keep line breaks.
I think his is what would need to be overridden: [discourse/app/controllers/topics\_controller.rb at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/app/controllers/topics_controller.rb#L276)
More specifically, this line:
>
I didn’t try, but this may be useful for this purpose: [Override existing Discourse methods in plugins](https://meta.discourse.org/t/override-existing-discourse-methods-in-plugins/83389)
I’d be happy to have a look, but I don’t have a development install right now (and I’m bad at coding, so hopefully someone more skilled will have a more suitable answer). 🙂
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### Author:  [@Don](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Don)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2023, 12:47am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-keep-post-views-on-lists/254069/5 "2023-02-05T00:47:48Z")
Hello, I think you can try it with `white-space: pre-line` it will keeps the topic line breaks in excerpt. 🙂
Add this to Common \> CSS
```scss
.topic-list {
a.topic-excerpt {
white-space: pre-line;
}
}
```
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### Author:  [@ProjeDEV](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ProjeDEV)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2023, 12:58am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-keep-post-views-on-lists/254069/6 "2023-02-05T00:58:12Z")
Thanks Don. It works 👍
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2023, 12:58am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-can-i-keep-post-views-on-lists/254069/7 "2023-03-07T00:58:47Z")
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