Text generation can be as simple as keeping a list of canned text that is copied and pasted, possibly linked with some glue text. The results may be satisfactory in simple cases. However, a good NLG system needs to include stages of planning and merging of information to enable the generation of text that is natural and does not become repetitive. Such a system has typical three stages:

1. Content determination and Discourse planning: Determination of the salient features that are worth being said.

2. Sentence Planning: Sentence aggregation, Referring expression generation and Lexicalisation.

3. Syntactic and morphological realisation.