Summarizing
Summarizing gives the “gist” of a chosen passage, using your own words and not the author’s. While an effective summary emphasizes all of the main points in a selection, it is significantly shorter than the original.
Purpose
Summarization is a valuable tool for academic, personal, and professional writing, and can be used for many purposes:
- To convey a general idea
- To give only necessary information
- To shorten material
- To reference material
- To set up quoted material
- To provide support
- To add credibility
- To establish background
- To offer an overview of a topic
What a Summary Should Contain
- Effective summaries are made up of concise, coherent sentences that communicate the key information of a passage.
- Summaries may involve deleting extraneous material, highlighting key points, synthesizing the overall meaning, or miniaturizing primary ideas.
- Remember that a summary must remain faithful to the author’s interpretation and emphasis.
- Summaries should focus on what the author is saying, not on how he or she is proving it.
- You should not give your own opinions about the author’s message; instead, maintain a neutral tone. Your summary can be biased only if the original passage is biased.
How to Summarize
- Read the passage you are summarizing at least twice so that you fully comprehend what the author is saying.
- Isolate the thesis, or main idea, of the passage to be summarized.
- Work through the text to identify the portions that support the author’s main idea; highlight or underline these sections
- Rephrase the main points into your own sentences, but remember to keep the author’s intended purpose and message.
- Don’t include examples and details.
- Begin with a reference to the writer, the title of the work, and possibly when and where it was published.
- Make up a new thesis that explains the essential idea of the passage. Don’t simply restate the author’s thesis; you want to prove that you understand the information in the passage by forming your own sentence. This helps you to re-create the meaning of the original in a way that makes sense for you.
- In order to avoid plagiarism while you are summarizing, be sure to change the thesis, sentence structure, and vocabulary.
- Your summary does not have to be in the same order as the original passage unless this arrangement is necessary for comprehension; however, you should use the same balance as the author. If the author devotes 30% of the piece to a topic, you should do the same.
- Finally, revise and edit to ensure accuracy.
- If you get stuck, pretend you are telling a friend what the passage was about. You will find yourself identifying the main points and supporting details naturally.
Checklist
- Is the main idea clear and accurate?
- Is your summary concise?
- Are there few (if any) details and examples?
- Does your summary include only information found in the original?
- Does your summary read like a unified paragraph?
- Did you include bibliographic information?
- Does your summary include your opinions or analysis? If so, delete them.
Remember
- Always write a summary with the author’s purpose in mind.
- The length of a summary depends on what is being summarized.
- Summarizing improves with practice.
Further Reading
- http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/summariesTOC.html – This site is organized around a series of links all relating to summary; the first link explains why developing the skill of summary writing is important, and the last three give you a chance to practice summarizing.
- http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/tips/summary/- Simple and straightforward, this site defines, states the purpose of summaries, and gives a brief explanation of the “how-to.” It provides a sample paragraph and summary.
- http://uwc.tamu.edu/handouts/writing/wrsummary.html – Our UWC handout combines a definition with a step-by-step plan for constructing a summary.
