What does the Text Summarizer do?
The Text Summarizer shortens text by keeping its opening sentences. You paste the text, pick how many sentences you want (1 to 10), and press Summarize Text. The summary box shows that many sentences from the start of your text, word for word, in their original order.
That's a deliberate kind of summary called a lead summary. It's the same trick newspapers have used for a century: the first sentences of a well-written article carry the who, what and when. If the writer put the point up front, the lead is the summary.
It runs in your browser with plain rules, not AI. Nothing you paste is sent anywhere, there's no sign-up, and the same text and length always give the same result. That's useful when you need to trust that the summary only contains sentences the author actually wrote.
How to summarize text with it
- Paste your text into Enter Text to Summarize. An article, an email, a report, notes, anything in sentences.
- Choose a number under Summary Length (sentences). It starts at 3. Pick 1 or 2 if you need to "summarize this in 1–2 sentences."
- Press Summarize Text.
- Read the result in the Summary box. To copy it, click inside the box, select all, and copy.
Want a different length? Change the number and press the button again. Nothing is saved between runs, so close the tab when you're done and it's gone.
A worked example
Here's a 65-word news paragraph:
Remote work is changing how small towns grow. Since 2020, many workers have left big cities for smaller places. Most of them picked towns with fast internet and cheaper housing. Local shops say weekday sales are up. Home prices in some of these towns have climbed fast. Long-time residents worry they will be priced out. Town councils are now debating new rules for short-term rentals.
With the length set to 2, the summary is:
Remote work is changing how small towns grow. Since 2020, many workers have left big cities for smaller places.
That's 19 words, under a third of the original, and it carries the main claim plus the context. Set the length to 1 and you get only the first sentence, a one-line headline. Set it to 3 and the third sentence adds who moved and why (30 words).
Notice what it doesn't do: it doesn't jump ahead to grab "Town councils are now debating new rules," even though that's arguably the news hook. The tool never ranks sentences by importance. It trusts the writer's order.
How the summarizer picks sentences
There are four rules, and knowing them tells you exactly what you'll get.
| Rule | What it means for your text |
|---|---|
| A sentence ends at a period, question mark, exclamation mark or line break | A heading or a list item on its own line counts as a sentence |
| Pieces of 10 characters or fewer are skipped | "OK." or "Thanks!" never takes up a slot |
| It keeps the first N sentences that are left | No ranking, no reordering, no rewriting |
| Sentences are joined with spaces | Paragraph breaks from the original are not kept |
If your text has fewer sentences than the length you picked, you get all of them. The tool doesn't pad. There's no word limit set on the input box, but the result is never longer than 10 sentences.
When a lead summary works, and when it doesn't
Lead summaries are excellent on writing that puts the point first:
- News articles and press releases. They're written so the top paragraph stands alone.
- Work email and reports. Most open with the ask or the finding. Two sentences tell you whether to read the rest.
- Research abstracts and executive summaries. Already compressed; the first two or three sentences carry the result.
- Your own drafts. If the lead summary of your memo misses the point, the memo buries the point. That's a free editing test.
They're weak on writing that builds to a conclusion. Essays, stories, opinion pieces that open with an anecdote, and meeting transcripts that start with small talk all save the important part for later. For those, paste only the section you care about, such as the conclusion or the decisions part of the notes, then summarize that.
Common problems and how to fix them
Numbers with decimals get cut. The tool treats every period as a sentence end, including the one in 4.5. Paste "The price rose 4.5% in May. Analysts expected less. Dr. Lee disagreed with them." and ask for 3 sentences: you get "The price rose 4. Analysts expected less. Lee disagreed with them." The "5% in May." piece is too short to keep, and so is "Dr." That changes the meaning, so check any number in the summary against the original. Writing "4.5" as "4,5" or "4½" before pasting avoids it.
Abbreviations split sentences. "Dr.", "Mr.", "e.g." and "U.S." all end a sentence as far as the tool is concerned. Short pieces disappear and long ones get chopped. Expand them before pasting if they appear in the first few sentences.
A title uses up a slot. A heading on its own line counts as a sentence if it's longer than 10 characters. Delete the title, byline and date before pasting, or pick one more sentence than you need.
Bullet lists become "sentences." Each line is a separate sentence. If the text opens with a list, the summary will be the first few items.
Quick check before you rely on a summary: read the first sentence of the original and the first sentence of the summary. If they don't match, a title, an abbreviation or a decimal got in the way.
Extractive vs. AI summaries
There are two ways to summarize text by machine. Extractive summaries copy sentences out of the original. Abstractive summaries, the kind AI writes, put the ideas in new words.
This tool is extractive, and the simplest kind: it takes the lead. Every word in the summary is the author's own, so it can't invent a claim, and it reads the same way every time. The cost is that it can't merge an idea spread across three paragraphs, and it can't shorten a long sentence.
If you need a rewritten summary, use the TL;DR Generator, which uses AI to write one sentence plus three bullets. Check AI summaries against the source before you quote them; they can state things the original didn't quite say.
How to shorten a paragraph by hand
Sometimes you don't want fewer sentences; you want the same paragraph, tighter. The summarizer can't rewrite, but these four cuts usually take 30% off:
- Delete the warm-up. "It's worth noting that" and "In today's world" add nothing.
- Cut doubled words. "Each and every," "first and foremost," "final outcome."
- Swap phrases for words. "In order to" becomes "to"; "due to the fact that" becomes "because."
- Merge sentences that repeat. If sentence two restates sentence one, keep the stronger one.
Check your progress with the Word Counter, and see whether the result got easier to read with the Reading Level Checker. If the summary is headed for slides, Text to Bullet Points turns blank-line-separated chunks into a list.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Text Summarizer use AI?
No. It splits your text into sentences and keeps the first ones you ask for, entirely in your browser. For an AI-written summary, use the TL;DR Generator.
How do I summarize something in 1–2 sentences?
Set Summary Length to 1 or 2 and press Summarize Text. You'll get the opening sentence or two of your text. Remove any title line first so it doesn't take a slot.
Is there a limit on how much text I can paste?
No limit is set on the input. The summary itself is at most 10 sentences. For very long documents, summarizing section by section often gives a better result than one pass, because each section has its own lead.
Why does my summary have a number cut in half?
The tool reads the period in a decimal like 4.5 as the end of a sentence. Rewrite the number before pasting, or check numbers in the summary against the original.
Can I summarize a PDF or a web page?
Not directly. Copy the text out of the PDF or page and paste it in. To get the text out of a PDF quickly, use Extract Text from PDF; for a scanned PDF with no text layer, run OCR PDF first.
Does it work in other languages?
Yes, for any language that ends sentences with a period, question mark or exclamation mark, such as Spanish, German, Portuguese, Polish or Russian. Languages with other sentence marks, like Chinese 。 or Hindi ।, won't split correctly.
Is the summary plagiarism if I use it?
It's the author's exact sentences, so treat it like a quote. Fine for your own notes; credit the source or rewrite it in your own words before you publish it.