8.4: Writing Summaries
Learning Objectives
- Determine when summaries should be used to integrate evidence
- Examine the steps involved in writing an effective summary
When and How Should You Summarize?
Knowing how to summarize is an important part of using sources effectively. A summary provides an objective, condensed (shortened) version of the original content. Unlike a review, it does NOT analyze, evaluate, or critique; your opinion of the work is not typically part of the summary. Since summaries usually occur within a context (e.g., part of your report), your thoughts about what you have summarized will probably be relevant to your subsequent analysis. But when writing the actual summary of someone else’s ideas, you must neutrally and accurately describe what you take to be the important ideas in the author’s or presenter’s work in as few words as possible. Being able to write a clear and useful summary is a valuable skill both in academic and professional contexts.
Tips for summarizing include
- write in the present tense;
- acknowledge the source’s title, publication date, and author in the opening of the summary;
- capture the author’s main idea in the opening of the summary, and then summarize the key points in sequential order after that;
- use various verbs to give attribution to the author throughout the summary;
- avoid using exact words from the original source unless necessary (avoid looking at the source when summarizing to ensure that your wording is unique);
- be sure to quote (i.e., include content in quotation marks) if it is necessary to use exact words from the source; and
- cite appropriately.
A summary is meant to inform your reader—who has not seen/read the original content—about the original source’s main points. It describes its purpose or main idea, and summarizes the supporting arguments that develop that idea. The summary often forms the foundation upon which a critique or new ideas rely.
In technical contexts, you will find the following types of summaries, which serve different purposes:
- A technical summary of someone else’s ideas, in the context of a report, helps you to support and develop your ideas. You may summarize someone’s ideas because they support your own, or because they differ from yours and allow you to introduce the idea you want to argue. Someone else’s theory may provide a framework for your analysis, so you might summarize the theory before beginning your argument. A summary can act as a springboard to launch your ideas
- An informative abstract/summary of a long or formal report informs the reader of the report’s key points. In this case, you will summarize all the main ideas, including the conclusion (and recommendations), of your report. These summaries are written by the report authors and, therefore, do not use signal phrases (see 6.3: Formal Report—Abstract/Summary).
- A descriptive abstract, written by the author(s) of a technical paper, describes the content and purpose of the report and is included at the beginning of the document. An abstract is pretty formulaic and consists of the following types of statements: problem, purpose, methods, findings, next steps or implications. Abstracts are written by the report’s authors and do not use signal phrases (see 6.3: Formal Report—Abstract/Summary).
- Conclusions appear at the end of a report; they reiterate and sum up the main points of the document and draw inferences based on the discussion or findings.
Example: Summarizing
This example refers to the Science News article “How AI Can Identify People Even in Anonymized Datasets” written by Nikk Ogasa and published on January 25, 2022.
Before you can summarize anything, you must understand the original text thoroughly and then systematically capture its main points. To achieve this, you may find it helpful to do work through these three stages:
Step 1: Pre-writing Stage
Actively read or watch the article/original content. Make notes. Make sure you understand what you are summarizing: What is its main purpose? What are the main points of support?
Reread/rewatch the original content and break it up into sections or “stages of thought.” Briefly summarize each section and indicate how it relates to the main idea. Again, paraphrase. Omit the finer details. Consider annotating and writing a reverse outline.
Step 2: Writing Stage
Now you are ready to begin writing your summary:
Provide the author’s name and title of the text being summarized. If you are summarizing a speaker’s presentation, give the presenter’s name, the title or topic of the presentation. If the context is important to your summary, give some details about the intended audience.
e.g., In “How AI Can Identify People Even in Anonymized Datasets” Nikk Ogasa (2022) reports that …
Paraphrase (i.e., write in your own words) the author’s thesis or main idea:
e.g., … artificial intelligence can use patterns of behaviour to correctly identify individuals from anonymous data.
Describe, in a neutral and objective manner, how the author supports and develops the main idea. Do not interpret, evaluate, critique, analyze. Leave out details and examples that are not important to the main idea. Do not quote from the article, or limit quotations to a single keyword or important phrase. Padding your summary with quotations is not an accepted method for summarizing. Give attribution to the author (e.g., “Ogasa explains” and “Ogasa describes”) to show that the ideas are not yours, but that they come from the article you are summarizing. Do not inadvertently present the author’s ideas as your own.
Cite and document your source using the APA method
e.g., (Ogasa, 2022, para. 5)
Step 3: Rewriting Stage
Review and revise your draft:
Revise the content and organization: Is it complete? Should you add any key ideas? Is it well organized? Is the content accurate? Does it follow the order of ideas of the original text? Can you get rid of any unnecessary content? Have you used your own words and phrasing?
Edit for flow: Do ideas flow smoothly together? Are sentences clear, concise, correct and coherent? Or do they require effort to decode? Do transitions effectively indicate the relationships between ideas? Have you effectively introduced, developed and concluded?
Proofread: Look for mechanical errors (typos, spelling, punctuation), and for grammar and usage errors that may have crept in during revision and editing.
TRY IT
Exercise 8.4.A: Practise Summarizing
Read, again, these three opening paragraphs from the Science News article “Why Kitchen Sponges Are the Perfect Home for Bacteria” written by Anna Gibbs and published on March 1, 2022 (also used in Exercise 8.2.A. and Exercise 8.3.A.)
After reading the paragraphs, summarize them in two sentences. Don’t forget to give attribution and cite.
“Why Kitchen Sponges Are the Perfect Home for Bacteria” (paras. 1-3)
Ask bacteria where they’d like to live, and they’ll answer: a kitchen sponge, please.
Sponges are microbe paradises, capable of housing 54 billion bacteria per cubic centimetre. In addition to being damp, airy and loaded with food scraps, sponges provide an optimal physical environment for bacteria, researchers report February 10 in Nature Chemical Biology.
Just like humans, bacteria prefer different levels of interactions with their peers. Some bacteria are more social, while others prefer solitude. Lingchong You, a synthetic biologist at Duke University, and colleagues wondered how separating different types of microbes would affect their community interactions. They found that intermediate levels of separation — similar to that found in a sponge — maximize the diversity of the community.
References & Attributions
References
Gibbs, A. (2022, March 1). Why kitchen sponges are the perfect home for bacteria. Science News. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sponge-kitchen-bacteria-microbe-diversity
Ogasa, N. (2022, January 25). How AI can identify people even in anonymized datasets. Science News. \https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ai-identify-anonymous-data-phone-neural-network
Attributions
Content on this page is adapted from Technical Writing Essentials by Suzan Last and Candice Neveu, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Content is adapted from Communication Commons, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
