How to summarize sentences in ChatGPT and example prompts: What to do for summaries with long character counts

Introduction.

ChatGPT is a very useful tool for summarizing long sentences in a concise manner. It can quickly summarize sentences of several thousand words in order to organize large amounts of information and quickly understand the main points. However, to use it effectively, it is important to understand a few key points.

This article describes how to use ChatGPT to summarize sentences, examples of specific prompts, and issues related to summarizing long sentences.

Basic Procedures for Summarizing with ChatGPT

In order to summarize text in ChatGPT, it is important that users set specific and clear prompts. The quality of the prompt will greatly affect the content and quality of the summary generated. Through the following steps, we will explain how to effectively use ChatGPT.

1. Clarification of purpose
   • The purpose of the summary should be clarified at the outset. For example, “to organize important points” or “to summarize information from a particular point of view,” etc. The information required will differ depending on the purpose. By clarifying the purpose, the direction of the summary will be set and a high-quality summary will be obtained.
2. Prompt design
   • Next, design prompts that give specific instructions on how you want the summary to be presented. Specific instructions such as “keep it brief,” “make it understandable for beginners,” or “focus on specific elements” will make it easier for ChatGPT to generate a summary that meets your expectations.
3. Verify and improve summary

   resultsPolylang placeholder do not modify

Examples of specific prompts

Below are examples of prompts for different situations.

1. General Summary
   • “Briefly summarize the following statement and summarize the main points in no more than 200 words.”
   • This prompt is suitable for a concise summary of a general statement. By limiting the number of characters, you can trim away extraneous information and summarize only the information you need.
2. Simplify specialized information
   • Please summarize the following technical statement in plain language for non-technical readers.”
   • Effective in communicating specialized information to the general reader. Summarize in easy-to-understand language, avoiding jargon.
3. Bulleted summary
   • Please bullet point the main points of the following sentence.”
   • Bullet-pointing the summary makes it easier to visually organize important information. This is especially useful when you want to clearly convey multiple points.
4. Short summary of long
   • “Summarize the following several thousand words, leaving out the main points in about 500 words.”
   • When summarizing a long document, it is easier to emphasize important elements by fitting the information into a specified number of characters. However, the generated summary may not always fit within the specified number of characters, so readjustment may be necessary.

Issues to consider when summarizing

There are several issues with ChatGPT when summarizing long sentences. One of them is that the number of characters specified in the summary may not be accurately reflected.
For example, even if you instruct the AI to “summarize within 300 characters,” the AI may generate a summary that exceeds 300 characters. This is because it is sometimes difficult to strictly adhere to the character count limit due to the process of natural generation by AI while understanding the structure of the text.

In addition, the relationship between the number of characters and tokens differs in Japanese from that in English. In Japanese, one character often does not correspond to one token, and for this reason, the number of characters may not exactly fit the number of tokens specified. Therefore, when specifying the number of characters, a slight margin of error should be taken into account and the prompt adjusted accordingly.

In addition, summarizing a long document requires discarding important information, but AI tends to treat all information equally, and as a result, the main points may be blurred. Therefore, it is important for a human to check the generated summary to ensure that important points are properly reflected.

Practical methods for long summaries

Since ChatGPT has a limit on the number of characters it can process at one time, the following devises are effective for summarizing long sentences.

Sending a sentence in separate parts: A long sentence can be divided into multiple parts, each of which can be summarized separately. This allows ChatGPT to accurately summarize each part and later merge them together to complete the overall summary.

Please summarize the text you are about to send. Here are the steps
Step 1: Since the amount of text is long, send it in three parts.
Step 2: When I have finished sending all of them, I will tell you “Done.
Step 3: Until I say “Done,” you will only say, “I understand.

Step-by-step summarization: A highly accurate summary can be obtained by taking a step-by-step approach, beginning with a broad summary of the entire document and then further refining the information.

Use of the latest technology: GPT-4o

In 2024, a new model of ChatGPT, the GPT-4o, will be introduced, capable of handling more tokens (characters) than ever before. the GPT-4ocan handleup to 32,000 tokens(about20,000-30,000charactersin Japanese), allowing for long text input and This makes it possible to efficiently handle large data sets. This allows for efficient summarization from large data sets and improved processing of long texts.

The evolution of GPT-4o has enabled more detailed and accurate summarization, making it even easier to extract information from large documents.

Note: Accuracy and copyright of the summary

1. Verify the accuracy of the generated summary: AI-generated summaries are not always accurate and may contain misleading information. It is important to verify that the generated summary reflects the original intent and make corrections as necessary.
2. Copyright considerations: Even if you summarize for your own use, you are expected to indicate the source when you publish; when sharing AI-generated summaries, it is important to respect the copyright of the original information and provide proper credit.

Key points for obtaining an effective summary

Summarize in stages
A balanced summary can be achieved by first summarizing the entire document in broad strokes and then compressing the information further. A step-by-step approach is effective because if you try to reduce all the information at once, important points may be lost.

Give clear instructions.
Giving specific instructions, such as specifying the number of words or “emphasize three important points,” will help you get a more precise summary. In particular, clearly prioritizing information will improve the quality of your summary.

Adjusting Prompts
If a single attempt does not produce satisfactory results, modifying the prompt or adding more specific instructions will improve the results.

For example, additional instructions such as “I want you to pay particular attention to this part” or “I want you to remove an extra section” will increase the likelihood that the AI will generate a more appropriate summary.

Be aware of your target audience

Specifying the intended audience for the summary will help ensure that the summary has the appropriate tone and style.
For example, whether a summary is intended for business professionals or students will require different information content and presentation, so it is important to set prompts to generate a summary that is appropriate for the reader.

ChatGPT’s new “Canvas” feature allows users to adjust the reading level of texts by selecting icons instead of prompts. With a wide range of reading levels, from kindergarten to graduate school, you can tailor your text to your target audience.

Interview AI can also summarize with a long character count specification

Interview AI, which transcribes a one-hour audio file in just 15 seconds and automatically converts it into a natural interview format, can also summarize sentences with a long character count specification.

For example, a summary result will be displayed even if the original interview text of 10,000 characters contains keywords and phrases that must be included in the summary and the summary character count is as high as 3,000 or 5,000 characters.

If you have tried summarizing long sentences with ChatGPT prompts and have not been successful, please try the Interview AI.

summary

When using ChatGPT to summarize text, the key to success is to clarify the purpose and set appropriate prompts.
Especially in summarizing long sentences, it is important to understand that it may be difficult for the AI to keep the number of characters to the specified number. Better results can be achieved through step-by-step summarization and prompting.