Summaries should include

If you cannot summarize a subject, even if you have memorized all the facts about it, you can be absolutely sure that you have not learned it. And, if you truly learn the subject, you will still be able to summarize it months or years from now.

Proficient students may monitor their understanding of a text by summarizing as they read. They understand that if they can write a one- or two-sentence summary of each paragraph after reading it, then that is a good sign that they have correctly understood it.

If they can not summarize the main idea of the paragraph, they know that comprehension has broken down and they need to use fix-up strategies to repair understanding.

Skip to main content. Provide accurate representations of the main points of the text they summarize. Avoid personal opinion. This approach has two significant problems, though: First , it no longer correctly represents the original text, so it misleads your reader about the ideas presented in that text. How Should I Organize a Summary? In summary-focused work, this introduction should accomplish a few things: Introduce the name of the author whose work you are summarizing.

Introduce the title of the text being summarized. Not all texts will have this component—for example, when summarizing a book written by one author, the title of the book and name of that author are sufficient information for your readers to easily locate the work you are summarizing.

State the main ideas of the text you are summarizing—just the big-picture components. Give context when necessary. Is this text responding to a current event? That might be important to know. Does this author have specific qualifications that make them an expert on this topic? This might also be relevant information. Summary introductions in these situations still generally need to Name the author.

Name the text being summarized. State just the relevant context, if there is any maybe the author has a specific credential that makes their work on this topic carry more weight than it would otherwise, or maybe the study they generated is now being used as a benchmark for additional research.

Concluding a Summary For writing in which summary is the sole purpose, here are some ideas for your conclusion. When your writing has a primary goal other than summary, your conclusion should Include an in-text citation, if appropriate.

How does it support, illustrate, or give new information about the point you are making in your writing? Connect it to your own main point for that paragraph so readers understand clearly why it deserves the space it takes up in your work. Previous: Writing Conclusions. Next: Paraphrasing. Skip to content. Skip to navigation. When you underline and annotate a text, when you ask yourself questions about its contents, when you work out an outline of its structure, you are establishing your understanding of what you are reading.

When you write a summary, you are demonstrating your understanding of the text and communicating it to your reader. To summarize is to condense a text to its main points and to do so in your own words. To include every detail is neither necessary nor desirable. Instead, you should extract only those elements that you think are most important—the main idea or thesis and its essential supporting points, which in the original passage may have been interwoven with less important material.

Many students make the mistake of confusing summary with analysis. They are not the same thing. A summary, on the other hand, does not require you to critique or respond to the ideas in a text. When you analyze a piece of writing, you generally summarize the contents briefly in order to establish for the reader the ideas that your essay will then go on to analyze, but a summary is not a substitute for the analysis itself.

If you are writing a literature paper, for example, your teacher probably does not want you to simply write a plot summary. You may include some very brief summary within a literature paper, but only as much as necessary to make your own interpretation, your thesis, clear.

It is important to remember that a summary is not an outline or synopsis of the points that the author makes in the order that the author gives them.

Instead, a summary is a distillation of the ideas or argument of the text. It is a reconstruction of the major point or points of development of a text, beginning with the thesis or main idea, followed by the points or details that support or elaborate on that idea. If a text is organized in a linear fashion, you may be able to write a summary simply by paraphrasing the major points from the beginning of the text to the end.

However, you should not assume that this will always be the case. Not all writers use such a straightforward structure.