Writing a Review Using Original Author in Title
How to Write a Summary | 5 Steps & Real Examples
Summarizing means giving a concise overview of a text'southward master points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.
Writing a summary does non involve critiquing or analyzing the source—you should simply provide a clear, objective, accurate account of the almost important data and ideas, without copying any text from the original and without missing any of the key points.
When to summarize
There are many situations in which you might have to summarize an article or other source:
- As a stand-alone assignment to show you lot've understood the fabric.
- To continue notes that will assist you think what you've read.
- To give an overview of other researchers' piece of work in a literature review.
When you lot're writing an academic text like an essay, inquiry newspaper, or dissertation, you'll engage with other researchers' work in a diverseness of means. Sometimes you lot might employ a brief quote to back up your point; sometimes you lot might paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.
Only information technology's often advisable to summarize a whole commodity or affiliate if information technology is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you lot 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 4 steps outline below to write a good summary.
Step ane: Read the text
You lot should read the commodity more than one time to make sure you've thoroughly understood it. Information technology's often constructive to read in three stages:
- Scan the article chop-chop to go a sense of its topic and overall shape.
- Read the article advisedly, highlighting important points and taking notes equally y'all read.
- Skim the commodity again to confirm you've understood the key points, and re-read whatever peculiarly important or difficult passages.
There are some easy tricks you lot tin can use to place the cardinal points as y'all read:
- Start by reading the abstract—this already contains the author'south ain summary of their work, and it tells you what to await from the article.
- Pay attention to headings and subheadings—these should give you lot a adept sense of what each part is about.
- Read the introduction and the determination together and compare them: what did the author set out to exercise, and what was the outcome?
Scribbr Commendation CheckerNew
The AI-powered Citation Checker helps you avert common mistakes such as:
- Missing commas and periods
- Incorrect usage of "et al."
- Ampersands (&) in narrative citations
- Missing reference entries
Learn more than
Stride 2: Intermission the text downwardly into sections
To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, pause it down into smaller parts.
If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organized into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction, methods, results, and discussion.
Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. Simply most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.
Effort writing a word or phrase in the margin next to each paragraph that describes the paragraph's content. So you tin can come across at a glance what each part of the article focuses on. If several paragraphs comprehend like or related topics, y'all may group them together in sections.
Step 3: Identify the key points in each section
Now information technology's time get through each role and pick out its most of import points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or determination of the commodity?
Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to excerpt the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered groundwork information or supplementary item.
In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part:
| Introduction |
|
|---|---|
| Methods |
|
| Results |
|
| Discussion/conclusion |
|
If the article takes a unlike form, you might have to call back more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.
In this case, pay detail attending to the thesis statement—the fundamental merits that the writer wants united states of america to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that betoken the main idea of each paragraph.
Step 4: Write the summary
Now that you lot know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you demand to put them in your own words.
To avoid plagiarism and show y'all've understood the article, it's essential to properly paraphrase the author's ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, non even just a sentence or 2.
The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your ain understanding of the author'south key points.
Let's take a expect at an instance. Below, we summarize this commodity, which scientifically investigates the old proverb "an apple a solar day keeps the doc away."
The written report used publicly bachelor cantankerous-sectional data from the National Wellness and Nutrition Exam Survey. Participants were categorized as either apple eaters or not-apple tree eaters based on their self-reported apple consumption in an average 24-hour period. They were likewise categorized as either avoiding or not avoiding the use of healthcare services in the past yr. The information was statistically analyzed to test whether there was an clan between apple tree consumption and several dependent variables: physician visits, hospital stays, use of mental health services, and use of prescription medication.
However, the authors also note several limitations of the study: most importantly, that apple eaters are likely to differ from non-apple eaters in ways that may have confounded the results (for example, apple eaters may be more likely to be wellness-conscious).
An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. Notwithstanding, frequently, yous'll want to give an even more than curtailed summary of an commodity.
For example, in a literature review or research paper, you may want to briefly summarize this study every bit office of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we tin can boil our summary downward even further to include just the about relevant information.
Using national survey data, Davis et al. (2015) tested the exclamation that "an apple tree a 24-hour interval keeps the doc abroad" and did non find statistically significant evidence in support of this hypothesis. While people who consumed apples were slightly less likely to use prescription medications, the study was unable to demonstrate a causal human relationship between these variables.
When summarizing as part of a larger text, it'south essential to properly cite the source of the summary. The exact format for citing depends on your citation style, merely it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the finish of your paper.
Yous can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free Citation Generators.
APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator
Step five: Bank check the summary against the commodity
Finally, read through the article again to ensure that:
- You've accurately represented the author's piece of work
- Y'all haven't missed any essential data
- The phrasing is not likewise similar to whatsoever sentences in the original.
If you lot're summarizing lots of articles every bit part of your ain work, it's oft a proficient idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Only be certain to use 1 that's safe and reliable.
Plagiarism Checker comparison
Often asked questions about summarizing
- What is a summary?
-
A summary is a brusk overview of the primary points of an commodity or other source, written entirely in your ain words.
- How long is a summary?
-
A summary is always much shorter than the original text. The length of a summary can range from just a few sentences to several paragraphs; information technology depends on the length of the article y'all're summarizing, and on the purpose of the summary.
Is this article helpful?
You have already voted. Thank you :-) Your vote is saved :-) Processing your vote...
bardonschistermin1948.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.scribbr.com/citing-sources/how-to-summarize/