Free article summarizer
Summarize any article into one post
Paste the text of an article. TweetSum picks its strongest sentences and gives you a post that fits in 280 characters, three to five key points and a one-line TL;DR. It all happens in this browser tab: nothing is uploaded, and no AI rewrites your source.
- Paste the article text, not the link
- Adjust length, points and numbers
- Copy the post, read it, then share
Summarizer
0 words
Key points
TL;DR
Read it against the article before you post. Extracts can lose context.
Show how every sentence scored
used in the post key point only Bars show the final score.
How the summarizer works
TweetSum is an extractive summarizer, the oldest and most predictable kind. It never writes a sentence of its own. Every word in the output was already in your text, so it can't invent a quote or a statistic. The trade-off is that it can't rephrase, so a picked sentence sometimes leans on context it left behind.
1 Split
The text is cut into sentences at periods, question marks and exclamation points. Abbreviations like "Dr." and "U.S." and initials are protected so they don't end a sentence. Short lines with no closing punctuation are treated as headlines: their words count, but they are never quoted.
2 Count words
Common words ("the", "said", "which") are dropped and simple plurals are merged, so "battery" and "batteries" count together. Each remaining word gets a weight equal to how often it appears, divided by the count of the most frequent word. Words the article keeps returning to are usually what it's about.
3 Score sentences
Each sentence gets 0.55 × word score + 0.25 × position + 0.20 × length. Word score is the sum of its word weights divided by the square root of their count. Position favors the opening, where news stories put the point. Length favors 12 to 30 words.
4 Adjust
"Keep numbers" adds 0.12 to sentences with a figure. Questions lose 30%, sentences that open with a quotation mark lose 15%, and sentences that start with "This", "It" or "They" lose 15% because they rarely make sense alone. Anything under six words is skipped.
5 Trim and assemble
The top sentence goes into the post. If it's too long, TweetSum drops opening connectors, then parentheses, dash asides, "she said" tags and "which" clauses, then cuts at the last comma that fits. More high scorers are added while they fit and don't repeat the first. Sentences stay in article order.
How characters are counted
The count follows the open-source counting rules X publishes for its apps. Latin letters, digits, common punctuation and most European scripts count as 1. Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count as 2, and so does an emoji, even a combined one such as a family or a flag. Every link counts as 23, however long it really is, because X shortens links. Bare domains such as example.com are links too. With the link option on, TweetSum adds a space plus your URL, or a [link] marker, and counts that as 24.
What it does well, and where to be careful
Works best on
- News stories and press releases, which lead with the main fact
- Explainers and reports with a clear topic that repeats
- Your own drafts, when you need a promo post fast
Read twice when it's
- An opinion piece that argues against a view before stating its own
- A research story, where the hedges ("in mice", "early data") matter
- A long interview, where the strongest line may belong to the wrong speaker
Our guide to avoiding misleading summaries covers these cases in detail.
Guides
How to Summarize an Article in One Post
Find the one claim, keep the detail that proves it, name the source and leave 24 characters for the link. A working method with examples.
Quoting and Citing Sources on Social Media
How much you can quote, how to mark a quote so readers know it isn't yours, and how to credit the writer and link back the right way.
How to Avoid Misleading Summaries
Short summaries go wrong in predictable ways. Here are the seven most common, with a quick check for each one.
How to Write a Good TL;DR
A TL;DR is one sentence that lets a reader skip everything else safely. How to write one, where to put it and what to leave out.
How to Summarize Research News Responsibly
Find the paper, note who was studied and how, keep the hedges, and don't let the press release write your post. A checklist for sharing science news.
Questions
Does TweetSum send my text anywhere?
No. The summarizer is a small JavaScript file that runs in your browser tab. The text you paste is never uploaded, logged or stored, and the page keeps working if you go offline after it loads.
Is this an AI summarizer?
No. TweetSum is extractive: it scores the sentences already in your text by word frequency, position and length, then picks and trims the best ones. It never writes new sentences, so it cannot invent facts. It also cannot rephrase, so always read the result before posting.
How does TweetSum count characters?
It follows the published X counting rules. Most Latin letters, digits and punctuation count as 1, while characters such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean text count as 2, and an emoji counts as 2. Any link counts as 23, whatever its real length. The post is kept at 280 or less.
What does the link placeholder do?
When it is on, TweetSum reserves 24 characters at the end of the post: a space plus 23 for the link. Paste the article URL into the link box, or swap the [link] marker for your URL after copying. Either way the count stays right.
What does "keep numbers" change?
It gives extra weight to sentences that contain figures, dates or percentages, and it stops the trimming step from cutting a clause that holds a number. Turn it on for news, research and earnings stories where the figure is the point.
Why does the summary sometimes read awkwardly?
Extractive summaries reuse whole sentences, so a sentence that starts with "But" or "This" can lose the context it relied on. TweetSum strips some of those openers, but it cannot fix every reference. Treat the output as a draft and edit it.
TweetSum is an independent tool and is not affiliated with X Corp.