Bullet Point Generator

About the Bullet Point Generator

Somebody sends you eleven paragraphs and asks what they should do about it. Somewhere in there are four decisions, two open questions and a great deal of throat-clearing, and separating them out is a task that takes real attention — which is why it tends not to happen and the eleven paragraphs get forwarded instead.

This page pulls a passage apart into the points it was actually making. Four styles cover the situations that come up. Short bullets of a few words each are for scanning. One full sentence per bullet is for a summary somebody else will read without the original beside it. Grouped bullets sort the points under two to four headings, which is what you want when a long document covers genuinely separate subjects. Action items go furthest: each line starts with an imperative verb, names the thing to be done, and attaches who and by when if the text says so.

The count is a target rather than a quota, and this matters. Ask for ten and it will produce seven if there are seven, because padding a list to hit a number is how a useful set of points turns into filler. It merges points that repeat each other, which happens constantly in transcripts and email threads where the same thing is said three times by three people.

The instruction that does most of the work is the one about information. A bullet reading "discussion of the budget" tells a reader nothing they did not already know from the subject line. "Budget cut to forty lakh, signed off by finance" tells them the thing. Every line is meant to carry content of that second kind, and a line that could have been guessed from the heading has failed.

Order is rearranged deliberately. Points come out of a document in the order they were written or spoken, which is almost never the order that makes them easy to act on.

How to use it

1. 1Paste the prose, notes or transcript you want broken down.
2. 2Choose a style. Action items are the one to use when the output is a to-do list rather than a summary.
3. 3Set roughly how many points you want. Fewer will come back if the text does not contain that many.
4. 4Check the result against the source for anything important that did not make the cut.
5. 5Copy the points out, or download them as a text file to paste into your notes.

Questions

Why did I get fewer bullets than I asked for?

Because the text did not hold that many distinct points, and inventing the remainder would have produced lines with nothing in them. The number is treated as a target to aim at rather than a quota to fill. If you consistently get far fewer, the source is probably repeating one idea at length.

What is the difference between action items and ordinary bullets?

Action items are filtered as well as reformatted. Only things somebody has to do come through, each phrased as an instruction with an owner and a deadline where the text supplies them. If nothing in the source is actionable it says so rather than converting observations into fake tasks.

Can I paste a meeting transcript?

That is one of its better uses, particularly with grouping turned on. Transcripts are long, repetitive and organised by who spoke rather than by subject, and reorganising them by subject is most of what makes them usable afterwards.

Do the bullets use the original wording?

Partly. Specific terms, names and figures are kept as written, but the phrasing is compressed, since a bullet that is a whole sentence lifted from a paragraph is rarely shorter than the paragraph in any useful sense.