Summarizing, or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.
There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:
Read the text
Break it down into sections
Identify the key points in each section
Write the summary
Check the summary against the article
Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or evaluating the source. You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).
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When to write a summary
There are many situations in which you might have to summarize an article or other source:
As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
When you’re writing an academic text like an essay, research paper, or dissertation, you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.
But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyze or critique it.
In any case, the goal of summarizing is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.
Step 1: Read the text
You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it. It’s often effective to read in three stages:
Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you read.
Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any particularly important or difficult passages.
There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:
Start by reading the abstract. This already contains the author’s own summary of their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
Pay attention to headings and subheadings. These should give you a good sense of what each part is about.
Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?