One embodiment of a method for summarizing an electronic document includes splitting the electronic document into a plurality of terms, wherein each of the plurality of terms is associated with a respective length, a respective informativeness score, and a respective coherence score, automatically selecting a subset of the plurality of terms, such that an aggregate informativeness score of the subset is maximized while an aggregate length of the subset is less than or equal to a maximum length, and arranging the subset as a summary of the electronic document.