Summarizing

Like paraphrasing, a summary is indirect quotation that re-casts the source in your own words; unlike a paraphrase, however, a summary is a fraction of the source length—anywhere from less than 1% to a quarter depending on the source length and length of the summary. A summary can reduce a whole novel or film to a single-sentence blurb, for instance, or it could reduce a 50-word paragraph to a 15-word sentence.

A summary does not include your opinions or interpretations of the source text.

The procedure for summarizing is much like that of paraphrasing except that it involves the extra step of pulling out highlights from the source. 

• Determine how big your summary should be (according to your audience’s needs) so that you have a sense of how much material you should collect from the source.

• Read and re-read the source text so that you thoroughly understand it.

• Pull out the main points, which usually come first at any level of direct-approach organization (i.e., the prologue or introduction at the beginning of a book, the abstract at the beginning of an article, or the topic sentence at the beginning of a paragraph).

  • Disregard detail such as supporting evidence and examples.

  • If you have an electronic copy of the source, copy and paste the main points into your notes; for a print source that you can mark up, use a highlighter then transcribe those main points into your electronic notes.

  • How many points you collect depends on how big your summary should be (according to audience needs).

• Paraphrase those main points (see the previous page for advice about paraphrasing).

• Edit your draft to make it coherent, clear, and especially concise.

• Ensure that your summary meets the needs of your audience and that your source is cited. Again, not having quotation marks around words doesn’t mean that you are off the hook for documenting your source(s).

In Summary…

When you summarize a source, you make it shorter in a way that meets the needs of the audience while remaining true to the meaning or intention of the original. (That’s a summary of this page).

How to Mix Quotation with Summary

A long summary can make readers feel that you and they are too distant from an important source. So when you write a summary as long as half a page, look for memorable phrases that you can quote within your summary:

• “Colomb and Williams emphasize that drafting is “an act of discovery” that can fuel a writer’s creative thinking. They acknowledge that some writers have to draft carefully and stick closely to their outlines, but they advise writers to draft as freely and as openly as they can. They encourage even slow and careful drafters to be open to new ideas and surprises and not to be limited by what they do before drafting. They still stress the value of steady work that follows a plan: for example, writing a little bit every day rather than all at once “in a fit of desperate inspiration.” But they show writers how to make the best of a plan while hoping that you will “discover what your storyboard has missed.”

When you add a few quotations to your summary, you seem a more lively writer. You give readers an idea of your source without quoting so much that your paper reads like a cut-and-paste job. If you have pages that are mostly summary and paraphrase, add a few notable quotations that will liven up your writing.

Adapted from:

"Summarizing Sources" by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Changes were made to the original work / No changes were made to the original work. 

"Paraphrase & Summary" by Lumen Learning. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).