Shotnest · Library
Keep a reading excerpt that can be understood later
The 421-character sample passage is filed as reading with a score of 2, below the confident level of 3, so keep its heading and source with it.
How long prose is recognised
When no marker phrase fits, Shotnest looks at the shape of the text. Each line's width is measured, with CJK and full-width characters counted twice. If the total reaches 300, the average line is at least 22 wide and fewer than three lines look like code, the text counts as prose. Its score is 2 plus one point for every six lines wider than 40.
The sample is a single 421-character line, so it qualifies as prose with a score of 2. That is below the confident level of 3. On this page the result is Reading with confident set to No; in the app, a score below 3 is passed to Apple's on-device model when one is available, and otherwise the screenshot goes to Notes & articles.
Original harmless example
- Text
- A quiet reading room has several shelves and a wide table. The passage describes how visitors choose a place to read, keep their notes together and return a borrowed volume to the right desk. Its purpose is to provide a long, ordinary prose example without copying a published work or representing a private document. The final sentences keep the context complete enough to review as a small standalone reading reference.
- Expected suggested shelf
- Reading
Save a passage you can use later
- Include the page or chapter heading in the screenshot.
- Capture the first and last sentence of the part you care about.
- If the source name is not on screen, take one more screenshot of the title page and put both in a folder.
- Search a rare word from the passage in Shotnest to confirm it was read.
- Sample passage · characters
- 421
- Score for the full passage
- Reading · 2
- First 200 characters only
- Everything else · 1
Why short excerpts end up elsewhere
- A 200-character cut of the same passage stays under the width total of 300 and falls back to Everything else with score 1.
- A marker word inside the passage, such as a recipe term, can still pull it to another shelf when that score reaches 3.
- Narrow columns lower the average width, which is why very short lines are less likely to count as prose.
- Lines are trimmed before they are measured, so indenting a passage with spaces does not make it wider.
- Japanese or Chinese text counts double per character, so about 150 such characters already reach the width total of 300.
A low score is a prompt to review
Reading with a score of 2 says the text is long and ordinary. It says nothing about the author or whether the quote is complete; that context has to be in the screenshot itself.