@inproceedings{yuan-etal-2025-sub,
title = "From Sub-Ability Diagnosis to Human-Aligned Generation: Bridging the Gap for Text Length Control via {M}arker{G}en",
author = "Yuan, Peiwen and
Tan, Chuyi and
Feng, Shaoxiong and
Li, Yiwei and
Wang, Xinglin and
Zhang, Yueqi and
Shi, Jiayi and
Pan, Boyuan and
Hu, Yao and
Li, Kan",
editor = "Che, Wanxiang and
Nabende, Joyce and
Shutova, Ekaterina and
Pilehvar, Mohammad Taher",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2025",
address = "Vienna, Austria",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.850/",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.850",
pages = "17370--17390",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-251-0",
abstract = "Despite the rapid progress of large language models (LLMs), their length-controllable text generation (LCTG) ability remains below expectations, posing a major limitation for practical applications. Existing methods mainly focus on end-to-end training to reinforce adherence to length constraints. However, the lack of decomposition and targeted enhancement of LCTG sub-abilities restricts further progress. To bridge this gap, we conduct a bottom-up decomposition of LCTG sub-abilities with human patterns as reference and perform a detailed error analysis. On this basis, we propose MarkerGen, a simple-yet-effective plug-and-play approach that: (1) mitigates LLM fundamental deficiencies via external tool integration; (2) conducts explicit length modeling with dynamically inserted markers; (3) employs a three-stage generation scheme to better align length constraints while maintaining content quality. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that MarkerGen significantly improves LCTG across various settings, exhibiting outstanding effectiveness and generalizability."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="yuan-etal-2025-sub">
<titleInfo>
<title>From Sub-Ability Diagnosis to Human-Aligned Generation: Bridging the Gap for Text Length Control via MarkerGen</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Peiwen</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Yuan</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Chuyi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Tan</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Shaoxiong</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Feng</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yiwei</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xinglin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yueqi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiayi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Shi</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Boyuan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Pan</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yao</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Hu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Kan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2025-07</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Wanxiang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Che</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Joyce</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Nabende</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ekaterina</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Shutova</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Mohammad</namePart>
<namePart type="given">Taher</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Pilehvar</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Vienna, Austria</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-251-0</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Despite the rapid progress of large language models (LLMs), their length-controllable text generation (LCTG) ability remains below expectations, posing a major limitation for practical applications. Existing methods mainly focus on end-to-end training to reinforce adherence to length constraints. However, the lack of decomposition and targeted enhancement of LCTG sub-abilities restricts further progress. To bridge this gap, we conduct a bottom-up decomposition of LCTG sub-abilities with human patterns as reference and perform a detailed error analysis. On this basis, we propose MarkerGen, a simple-yet-effective plug-and-play approach that: (1) mitigates LLM fundamental deficiencies via external tool integration; (2) conducts explicit length modeling with dynamically inserted markers; (3) employs a three-stage generation scheme to better align length constraints while maintaining content quality. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that MarkerGen significantly improves LCTG across various settings, exhibiting outstanding effectiveness and generalizability.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">yuan-etal-2025-sub</identifier>
<identifier type="doi">10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.850</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.850/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2025-07</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>17370</start>
<end>17390</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T From Sub-Ability Diagnosis to Human-Aligned Generation: Bridging the Gap for Text Length Control via MarkerGen
%A Yuan, Peiwen
%A Tan, Chuyi
%A Feng, Shaoxiong
%A Li, Yiwei
%A Wang, Xinglin
%A Zhang, Yueqi
%A Shi, Jiayi
%A Pan, Boyuan
%A Hu, Yao
%A Li, Kan
%Y Che, Wanxiang
%Y Nabende, Joyce
%Y Shutova, Ekaterina
%Y Pilehvar, Mohammad Taher
%S Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2025
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Vienna, Austria
%@ 979-8-89176-251-0
%F yuan-etal-2025-sub
%X Despite the rapid progress of large language models (LLMs), their length-controllable text generation (LCTG) ability remains below expectations, posing a major limitation for practical applications. Existing methods mainly focus on end-to-end training to reinforce adherence to length constraints. However, the lack of decomposition and targeted enhancement of LCTG sub-abilities restricts further progress. To bridge this gap, we conduct a bottom-up decomposition of LCTG sub-abilities with human patterns as reference and perform a detailed error analysis. On this basis, we propose MarkerGen, a simple-yet-effective plug-and-play approach that: (1) mitigates LLM fundamental deficiencies via external tool integration; (2) conducts explicit length modeling with dynamically inserted markers; (3) employs a three-stage generation scheme to better align length constraints while maintaining content quality. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that MarkerGen significantly improves LCTG across various settings, exhibiting outstanding effectiveness and generalizability.
%R 10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.850
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.850/
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.850
%P 17370-17390
Markdown (Informal)
[From Sub-Ability Diagnosis to Human-Aligned Generation: Bridging the Gap for Text Length Control via MarkerGen](https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.850/) (Yuan et al., ACL 2025)
ACL
- Peiwen Yuan, Chuyi Tan, Shaoxiong Feng, Yiwei Li, Xinglin Wang, Yueqi Zhang, Jiayi Shi, Boyuan Pan, Yao Hu, and Kan Li. 2025. From Sub-Ability Diagnosis to Human-Aligned Generation: Bridging the Gap for Text Length Control via MarkerGen. In Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 17370–17390, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.