Summaries: An Introduction

Summaries range from the brief one-sentence condensation, to the more lengthy paraphrase which expresses another's ideas in your own words and sentence order, to the more formal précis which condenses the original to a specified length while retaining the author's approach and ordering of ideas.

N.B.: Teachers and textbooks frequently use the words abstract, summary, paraphrase, and précis interchangeably.

Practice in writing summaries will benefit you in important ways as a student and as a writer:

It will give you practice in close, attentive reading, and train you to do justice to what you read (rather than reading into a work only what is familiar to you).
It will strengthen your sense of structure in writing: how a writer organizes material, develops his or her points, and moves from one point to another.
It will develop your sense of what is important in a written work, enabling you to distinguish between key points, the material backing them up, specific examples and illustrations, and mere asides.

In writing a summary, make sure that you grasp the main trend of thought in the work being summarized. Above all, you need to understand the work's organization clearly. To help you, concentrate on these three closely related tasks:

Identify key sentences (underline them as you read): thesis statements (which sum up the major point of the whole work or its particular sections); and topic sentences (which are developed in the rest of the paragraphs they begin).
Look for the author's own compact summaries, either at the beginning or end of a passage, or at points of transition.
Finally, formulate in your own words major points that seem to be implied by the author but not spelled out in any sentence (remembering that your purpose is to report what is said, not to interpret it).

To reduce explanation and illustration to the essential minimum:

Omit passages that restate a point for clarity or emphasis.
Drastically condense lengthy details, examples, statistics--but do not omit information or examples that are necessary to a clear understanding of the summarized work.
Be specific whenever possible.

Where the original uses a whole clause, try to sum up the same idea in a phrase; where it uses a phrase, try to use a single word; where several near synonyms restate the same idea, choose the one that gives the central common meaning
Use a simple or complex sentence rather than a compound sentence to summarize a paragraph (unless the original paragraph itself is poorly organized). A compound sentence implies that there are two or more equally important ideas in the paragraph. If you find that you have written a compound summarizing sentence, recheck the paragraph to make sure that the author did not imply some subordinating relationship that you missed.
In determining the author's intent, be alert to such writing techniques as parallel clauses and phrases (which indicate ideas of equal weight), and transitional words and phrases (which show relationships between ideas).

Unless the original page is already severely condensed, a summary of about one-third or one-fourth the length of the original can usually preserve the essential points. The shorter the summary, however, the greater the danger of oversimplification or outright misrepresentation. Be careful to preserve the essential conditions or distinctions:

if- and unless- clauses;
differences between is, will, and might;
words like only, almost, or the phrase on the whole.

Moreover, preserve the relative emphasis of the original, giving more prominence to a point treated at length than to one mentioned in passing.

EXAMPLES:

Read the following passage--how would you summarize it?

The invention of the process of printing from movable type, which occurred in Germany about the middle of the fifteenth century, was destined to exercise a far-reaching influence on all the vernacular languages of Europe. Introduced into England about 1476 by William Caxton, who had learned the art on the continent, printing made such rapid progress that a scant century later it was observed that manuscript books were seldom to be met with and almost never used. Some idea of the rapidity with which the new process swept forward may be had from the fact that in Europe the number of books printed before the year 1500 reached the surprising figure of 35,000. The majority of these, it is true, were in Latin, whereas it is in the modern languages that the effect of the printing press is chiefly felt. But in England over 20,000 titles in English had appeared by 1640, ranging all the way from mere pamphlets to massive folios. The result was to bring books, which had formerly been the expensive luxury of the few, within the reach of all. More important, however, was the fact, so obvious today, that it was possible to reproduce a book in a thousand copies or a hundred thousand, every one exactly like the other. A powerful force thus existed for promoting a standard uniform language, and the means were now available for spreading that language throughout the territory in which it was understood. (243 words) (Baugh, A History of the English Language)

Now look at two summaries of it, one from a textbook and a second from a student. The two may be compared with each other, and with your own, checking for conciseness, clarity, and accuracy in the sentences, and the selection of information (major points and qualifications).

The Textbook's Version

Printing from movable type, invented in Germany about 1450 and brought to England about 1476, had a far-reaching influence on all European languages. Within a hundred years, manuscript books had become rare. Though at first most printed books were in Latin, over 20,000 titles in English had appeared by 1640. Books were now within the reach of everyone and could exert a powerful standardizing influence upon the language. (67 words)

The Student's Version

Printing, invented in Germany in the mid-fifteenth century, was introduced into England in 1476 by William Caxton. A century later manuscript books had almost disappeared. Before 1500, 35,000 books, most in Latin, were printed in Europe, but in England over 20,000 books in English had appeared by 1640. Books, within reach of poor and rich alike, promoted the spread of standardized English throughout the English linguistic territory. (68 words)

Source: Copyright, The Department of English, University of Victoria, 1995.