Note formatter — tidy messy notes into bullets, numbered lists or Cornell notes

How to use the note formatter

1. Paste your notes into Raw notes. Bullets of any kind (-, *, •), numbers such as “1)” and messy spacing are fine.
2. Choose a Layout: Bullets, Numbered or Cornell.
3. Under One point per, choose Line to keep each line as one point, or Sentence to split long lines into one point per sentence.
4. Add a Title (optional).
5. Tick Add key sentences (rule-based, extractive) and set how many Key sentences (1 to 10) if you want a short summary list.
6. Copy the result or save notes.txt. For Cornell, print the Cornell notes page.

What it does and when to use it

Notes taken quickly in class or copied from slides are full of mixed bullets, lowercase starts, double spaces and repeated lines. The formatter does the tidying, so you can start revising from a clean page.

The Cornell layout suits students who test themselves from notes. After formatting, the flashcard maker turns key terms into cards, and the spaced repetition planner tells you when to review them. For a long block of text with no line breaks, run the paragraph splitter first.

How it works

Each line is trimmed and its spaces are collapsed. Heading lines start a new section. Other lines lose any leading bullet or number. In Sentence mode, they are also split at full stops, question marks and exclamation marks, while abbreviations such as e.g., Dr. and a.m., initials and decimals are kept together. Each point gets a capital first letter, and a point identical to the one before it is dropped.

Key sentences follow a Luhn-style rule from 1958. Each sentence scores by how often its content words (common words such as “the” and “and” are ignored) appear across all the notes, divided by the square root of its word count. The top-scoring sentences are listed in their original order.

Worked examples

Numbered, one point per line. The notes “# Causes of WW1”, “* militarism”, “* alliances” twice, “IMPERIALISM” and “- competition for colonies” become two headings, “Causes of WW1” and “Imperialism”, with points numbered 1. Militarism, 2. Alliances, then 1. Competition for colonies. The second “alliances” is removed.

Lowercase sentences. “Respiration:” followed by “releases energy from glucose. it happens in every living cell.” in Sentence mode gives the heading “Respiration” and two bullets, each starting with a capital.

Key sentences from the sample. With 2 key sentences, the biology sample yields “Uses light energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into glucose” and “Aerobic respiration needs oxygen and produces carbon dioxide and water.” They share frequent words such as carbon, dioxide, water and glucose.

Limits and tips

• Indented sub-points are flattened to one level. For a numbered hierarchy, use the essay outline builder.
• A short line in capitals, such as an acronym on its own (“DNA”), is taken as a heading. Add a lowercase word to keep it as a point.
• Key sentences are a reading aid, not a summary you can hand in. Write your own summary in your own words.