Customising excerpt in theme - php

Question

I've been reading a lot of how to customize excerpt function in WordPress but I have no idea how to proceed with this.
The theme that I am using already have 4 pre-customized excerpt functions and the one that I will show here is closest to my desired but still needs to improve.
My question is how to stop erasing HTML formating from my content (line breaks, paragraphs, font variants, etc)?
add_shortcode('display_news_s5', 'be_display_posts_shortcode5');
function be_display_posts_shortcode5($atts) {
// Pull in shortcode attributes and set defaults
extract( shortcode_atts( array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'post_parent' => false,
'id' => false,
'tag' => '',
'category' => '',
'offset' => 0,
'posts_per_page' => '1',
'order' => 'DESC',
'orderby' => 'date',
'include_date' => false,
'include_excerpt' => false,
'excerpt_l' => 8,
'taxonomy' => false,
'tax_term' => true,
'tax_operator' => 'IN'
), $atts ) );
// Set up initial query for post
$args = array(
'post_type' => explode( ',', $post_type ),
'tag' => $tag,
'category_name' => $category,
'p' => $id,
'posts_per_page' => $posts_per_page,
'order' => $order,
'orderby' => $orderby,
'offset' => $offset
);
// If Post IDs
if( $id ) {
$posts_in = explode( ',', $id );
$args['post__in'] = $posts_in;
}
// If taxonomy attributes, create a taxonomy query
if ( !empty( $taxonomy ) && !empty( $tax_term ) ) {
// Term string to array
$tax_term = explode( ', ', $tax_term );
// Validate operator
if( !in_array( $tax_operator, array( 'IN', 'NOT IN', 'AND' ) ) )
$tax_operator = 'IN';
$tax_args = array(
'tax_query' => array(
array(
'taxonomy' => $taxonomy,
'field' => 'slug',
'terms' => $tax_term,
'operator' => $tax_operator
)
)
);
$args = array_merge( $args, $tax_args );
}
// If post parent attribute, set up parent
if( $post_parent ) {
if( 'current' == $post_parent ) {
global $post;
$post_parent = $post->ID;
}
$args['post_parent'] = $post_parent;
}
$listing = new WP_Query( apply_filters( 'display_posts_shortcode_args', $args, $atts ) );
$count = 0;
if ( !$listing->have_posts() )
return apply_filters ('display_posts_shortcode_no_results', false );
$inner = '';
while ( $listing->have_posts() ): $listing->the_post(); global $post;
$count++;
if( $count == 1 ){
$style = ' news-main-post';
} else {
$style = ' news-list-posts';
}
$title = '<div class="news-listing-title"><a class="title" href="'. get_permalink() .'">'. get_the_title() .'</a></div>';
if ($include_date == 'true') $date = ' <div class="news-listing-meta"><span class="news-listing-date">'. get_the_date() . '</span><span class="news-listing-comment">('. get_comments_number() .')</span></div>';
else $date = '';
if ($include_excerpt == 'true') $excerpt = '<span>' .excerpt($excerpt_l) . '</span>';
else $excerpt = '';
$output = '<div class="news-listing' . $style . '"><div class="news-listing-item">'. $title . $excerpt . $date . '</div></div>';
$inner .= apply_filters( 'display_posts_shortcode_output', $output, $atts, $title, $excerpt, $date );
endwhile; wp_reset_query();
$open = apply_filters( 'display_posts_shortcode_wrapper_open', '<div class="news-listing-wrapper-s3">' );
$close = apply_filters( 'display_posts_shortcode_wrapper_close', '<div class="clear"></div></div>' );
$return = $open . $inner . $close;
return $return;
}

Answer 1

Have a look here: LINK looks like its doing what you want to acchieve.