The purpose of a summary

Summaries serve many purposes for writers and researchers. Primarily, the summary is a useful way for student writers to learn new information, move new information from short-term to long-term memory, take research notes, or prepare an overview of a topic or article when the audience will not be reading the original work(s) for themselves. A summary provides a condensed version of the original text. Summaries, sometimes referred to as abstracts by researchers and scholars, are often included at the beginning of a long article to communicate its core ideas to the audience before they read the entire text. Summaries are also used in writing annotated bibliographies, in which a researcher composes a list of bibliographic citations accompanied by summaries of articles or books on a focused topic.

Guidelines for writing a summary

• The summary condenses the main ideas of a text so that its readers will understand the gist of the original work. 
• The summary is written in its author’s own words, but it very carefully retains the intent, tone, and key ideas of the writer of the original work. 
• A summary is typically one-quarter to one-third the length of the original and is written in third person. 
• The summary may sometimes quote a particularly effective word or phrase from the original, which should be placed in quotation marks.
• Identify the original work by title and author in the first sentence of the SUMMARY. 
• Since it is the summation of another writer’s ideas, the SUMMARY should credit the original source by identifying its publication information (author, title, genre, where and when it was published and by whom). This can be done by listing a bibliographic reference for the original work. 
• Follow the specific instructions for your assignment.

How to get started

Writing a good summary requires you to be a good reader. To start the process of writing the summary, read the original text, looking for and marking the main ideas. Remember that topic sentences and closing sentences of paragraphs may help you in this endeavor. Also remember to use quotation marks around any direct quotations you use from the original work.

• Write down the text’s main point in sentence form, identifying the type of text, the writer, what the writer does (reports, explores, analyzes, argues), and the most important point the writer makes about the topic.
• In your own notes divide the text into sections, which will be evident according to subheadings, where the writer uses signal phrases to move from one subtopic to another, or from the statement of an idea to the reasons, evidence, and examples that support it.
• In one or two sentences, sum up what each of the text’s sections says. What are the key points the author makes to support the main idea? You’re really composing your own topic sentence for each major section of the text. 
• As one of your concluding lines, consider combining your sentence stating the writer’s main point (thesis) with the sentences summarizing each of the text’s major sections. 
• Now you have a first draft of a summary. Read the draft to see if it makes sense. Add, remove, or change parts as needed.

The Objective Summary Vs. The Critical Summary

In The Writer’s Work, Frank O’Hare distinguishes between the objective summary and the critical summary. Called perhaps by other names, these two purposes behind writing summaries may be an important consideration for your assignment.

The purpose of the objective summary is to condense the main ideas of the original source without offering any opinion or evaluation. In this way, the readers may use the objective information to draw their own conclusions and to form their own opinions.

The purpose of the critical summary is to condense the information contained in the original work as well as to comment on the effectiveness and quality of the original article. It requires the summary writer to evaluate the original work, pass on his or her assessment of it, and support his or her conclusions. This is accomplished in addition to condensing the objective information.