Summarizing Tips

A Bridgewater College Writing Center Handout

What Is a Summary?

A summary is a shortened version of another's text, explanation, argument, or narrative. It includes all of the main points of the original but reduces the detail of the original.

Why Summarize?

If your purpose is one of the following, you may wish to summarize a whole text or a portion of a text:

• to discuss someone's argument or text directly;
• to supply context for a specific point in another's text that you are discussing;
• to use as expert evidence for a point you are making in your own argumentative text;
• to present an opposing point of view that you wish to refute.

How to Include Summaries in Your Text

• Introduce the topic in your own words, but make it clear that you are presenting someone else's ideas with wording like "H. H. Smith argues that . . ." or "According to medical researcher Donald Smith, . . ." or "Smith also claims that . . .".
• A good way to make sure you've completely represented the author's ideas is to write down something for each paragraph of the original text. Then delete any ideas that don't seem to be central to the argument. One example of this might be a full paragraph that develops one particular illustration of the point the author is making; your summary would include the point but not the illustration.
• Make sure that you've gotten the main idea of each paragraph. If the author consistently uses topic sentences, use them as clues to the structure of his or her argument as a whole. Remember that a topic sentence can appear anywhere in a paragraph—beginning, middle, or end.
• Present the ideas of the original using your own sentence structure as well as your own word choice.
• Cite your source, even if you do not use a direct quotation from the source.

Example (from Rules for Writers, 5th ed.)

Original Source In some respects, the increasing frequency of mountain lion encounters in California has as much to do with a growing human population as it does with rising mountain lion numbers. The scenic solitude of the western ranges is prime cougar habitat, and it is falling swiftly to the developer's spade. Meanwhile, with their ideal habitat already at its carrying capacity, mountain lions are forcing younger cats into less suitable terrain, including residential areas. Add that cougars have generally grown bolder under a lengthy ban on their being hunted, and an unsettling scenario begins to emerge. Rychnovsky, "Clawing into Controversy," p. 40)

Summary Encounters between mountain lions and humans are on the rise in California because increasing numbers of lions are competing for a shrinking habitat. As the lions' wild habitat shrinks, older lions force younger lions into residential areas. These lions have lost some of their fear of humans because of a ban on hunting.

Hacker, Diana. Rules for Writers. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 398-399.

By Alice L. Trupe, updated August 22, 2005

Bridgewater College Writing Center