You can determine whether you want to show the full "intro text" or to limit it to a certain amount of characters. If you show the full "intro text" you risk having a home page that looks a big disorganized because different articles' intro text have different length.

 

Here's how you limit the size of characters:

 

Go to Components -> Magazine -> Issues

 

Open the issue and switch to "Design" tab.

 

On  "Intro Text Length:" enter the amount of characters you'd like to display. Keep in mind that if you make this amount too big, this will not be effective. 100-200 characters should work fine. Tweak it as you go.

 

Tip: if you decide to limit the amount of characters, be sure to "show" the intro text on the article page. The reason is that often time the text on the home page will get cut in the middle of the sentence and you'd like people to be able to finish reading the intro text.