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

1.    Read the passage you are summarizing at least twice so that you fully comprehend what the author is saying.
2.    Isolate the thesis, or main idea, of the passage to be summarized.
3.    Work through the text to identify the portions that support the author’s main idea; highlight or underline these sections
4.    Rephrase the main points into your own sentences, but remember to keep the author’s intended purpose and message.
5.    Don’t include examples and details.
6.    Begin with a reference to the writer, the title of the work, and possibly when and where it was published.
7.    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.
8.    In order to avoid plagiarism while you are summarizing, be sure to change the thesis, sentence structure, and vocabulary.
9.    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.
10.    Finally, revise and edit to ensure accuracy.
11.    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.

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