Text summarizer. The key sentences, nothing else.

How to use the Text Summarizer

This summarizer shortens a long text by picking out its most important sentences and keeping them word for word. It scores each sentence by how often its meaningful words appear across the whole text, adds weight to opening sentences and to any keywords you give it, then keeps the top scorers in their original order. Use it to get the gist of an article, report or essay quickly.

Step by step

1. 1
   Paste the text

   Paste your article into Original text. A sample article about the four-day work week is loaded when the page opens, so you can see a summary straight away. Press Clear to empty the box, or Load sample to bring the article back.

2. 2
   Choose how long the summary is

   Under summary length, % of text is selected first. Drag the Keep slider from 5% to 60% of the sentences; the default is 25%. Or press N sentences and type an exact Number of sentences from 1 to 100; it starts at 5.

3. 3
   Pick the output style

   Paragraph keeps the chosen sentences grouped by the paragraph they came from. Bullet points puts each sentence on its own line with a bullet in front.

4. 4
   Steer it with keywords

   Type words into Keyword boost (optional), separated by commas or spaces. Any sentence containing one of them scores higher, so the summary leans toward that topic.

5. 5
   Copy or download

   The Summary box updates a moment after each change. Press Copy to copy it, or Download .txt to save it as summary.txt.

Reading the stats

• With the sample article and the default 25%, the live stats show 394 original words and 20 original sentences, cut to 90 summary words and 5 summary sentences, which is 77% shorter than the original.
• The percentage counts sentences, not words. 25% of 20 sentences is 5 sentences, rounded to the nearest whole sentence and never fewer than one.
• The shorter than the original figure compares word counts, so a summary built from long sentences can be less of a cut than the slider suggests.
• Sentences are never rewritten. Every sentence in the summary appears in your original text, in the same order.

Tips and common mistakes

• Separate paragraphs with a blank line. The first sentence of each paragraph gets a small boost, and paragraph output uses the breaks to group sentences.
• Keywords are matched inside words, so work also boosts sentences that contain workers or network. Use longer keywords if a short one matches too much.
• A sentence is only split where the next one starts with a capital letter or a number, even after an opening quote or bracket. Text pasted without capitals or full stops may come through as one long sentence.
• Because sentences are lifted out of context, a summary can include a line that starts with a word like this or however. Read it through before you share it.
• Common abbreviations such as Dr. and e.g. do not end a sentence, but rarer ones may cut a sentence in two.

Privacy and limits

The summary is worked out in your browser and the text never leaves your device. Nothing is saved, so reloading the page brings back the sample article. Copy or download the summary before you leave.

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Everything the summarizer does.

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