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Writing Summaries

Definition: a brief restatement in your own words of a text’s main ideas; a condensation of “an extended idea or argument into a sentence or more in your own words”.

Characteristics:

• Summaries identify the source of original text.

• Summaries demonstrate your understanding of a text’s subject matter.

• Summaries are shorter (at least 60% shorter) than the original text—they omit the original text’s “examples, asides, analogies, and rhetorical strategies.

• Summaries differ from paraphrases—paraphrases more closely follow the original text’s presentation (they still use your words, but they are longer than summaries).

• Summaries focus exclusively on the presentation of the writer’s main ideas—they do not include your interpretations or opinions.

• Summaries normally are written in your own words—they do not contain extended quotes or paraphrases.

• Summaries rely on the use of standard signal phrases (“According to the author...”; “The author believes...”; etc.).

Tips on Writing Summaries

Step One (Prewriting):

• Read the article quickly.

• Try to get a sense of the article’s general focus and content.

Step Two (Drafting):

• Restate the article’s thesis simply and in your own words.

• Restate each paragraph’s topic simply and in your own words.

Step Three (Revising):

• Combine sentences in Step Two to form your summary; organize your summary sentences in the same order as the main ideas in the original text.

• Edit very carefully for neatness and correctness.

Practical Points

A Good SUMMARY of an entire source (paragraph, article, etc.)

• Clearly identifies the author and source of the material, preferably in the first sentence.

• Periodically indicates that a long summary is still the material of another author by inserting phrases like “He goes on to point out. . .” “The article also maintains that. . . ,” etc.

• Begins with the author’s main point and contains only the key supporting details.

• Expresses the author’s words or ideas in your own words, but does not include your own opinions about the author’s ideas or about the subject under discussion.

• Quotes directly from the work only if absolutely necessary.

• Preserves, as much as possible, the order, balance and proportion, and emphasis of the original work. (In order to preserve the author’s emphasis, you may occasionally have to change his/her order.)

Example

The following paragraph is summarized below. Note how the brief summary uses the principles outlined above.

Today, pornography attempts to make its audience focus their fantasies on specific people. The "Playmate of the Month" is a particular woman about whom the reader is meant to have particular fantasies. In my view, this has a more baneful effect on people--makes them demented, in fact, in a way that earlier pornography didn't. Today's pornography promises them that there exists, somewhere on this earth, a life of endlessly desirable and available women and endlessly potent men. The promise that this life is just around the corner--in Hugh Hefner's mansion, or even just in the next joint or the next snort--is maddening and disorienting. And in its futility, it makes for rage and self-hatred. The traditional argument against censorship--that "no one can be seduced by a book"--was probably valid when pornography was impersonal and anonymous, purely an aid to fantasizing about sexual utopia. Today, however, there is addiction and seduction in pornography.