21.3: Summarizing

What is a summary? When you summarize material from a source, you zero in on the main points and restate them concisely in your own words. This technique is appropriate when only the major ideas are relevant to your paper or when you need to simplify complex information into a few key points for your readers.

Steps to summary

Be sure to review the source material as you summarize it. Identify the main idea and restate it as concisely as you can— preferably in one sentence. Depending on your purpose, you may also add another sentence or two condensing any important details or examples. Check your summary to make sure it is accurate and complete.  Follow the steps below to accurately summarize a source. 

1. Read the text multiple times, using active reading techniques, read and reread the original material until you understand it.

2. Circle or underline key words that identify the main idea and major supporting points. In particular, underline all of the topic sentences. You might also want to create an outline or map that diagrams the general and specific relationships among sentences (in a paragraph) or paragraphs (in an article or chapter). 

3. Close the source. You are less likely to plagiarize if you rely on your own memory to reconstruct the author’s ideas in your own way. 

4. Write the summary. Your goal is to capture in your own words and sentence structure the main idea (thesis) of the original text to inform your reader what the author had to say. Using your own words, write sentences that state the author’s main idea along with the most important major details.

a. Your summary should be accurate; it should not add anything that did not appear in the original or omit anything important that is contained in the original.

b. Remain purely objective reporting content of the text only). In other words, do not offer your own reactions or opinions; just restate the author’s points without commenting on them.

c. Do not include any direct quotes. Remember the goal is to help the reader get the gist of a longer text and not have to do any close reading of it. 

d. Follow the order of ideas in the original text.

5. Check accuracy. Return to the source and read it again. Have you captured the author’s overall main idea (thesis?) Have you missed any important supporting ideas? Have you represented the author’s idea accurately? 

6. Add signal phrase.  This is a sentence or sentence beginning that leads into source material. In this case, a summary.

Example Summary

In his draft, Jorge summarized the following paragraph from “The Republic of Imagination” by Azar Nafisi: The crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaking havoc across the land, a mercenary and utilitarian attitude that demonstrates little empathy for people’s actual well-being, that dismisses imagination and thought, branding passion for knowledge as irrelevant. Shrill posturing in the media and among policy makers fosters a boxing-match mentality as we, the citizens, become spectators whose emotions and sensations must be kept high in a sort of adrenaline rush that turns us into passive onlookers, addicted to the game. Sample Summary: Azar Nafisi argues that America is afflicted by practical mindset that rejects thinking, creativity, and caring for others, and instead embraces a “passive” but high-strung mindset.

A summary restates ideas in your own words—but for specialized or clinical terms, you may need to use terms that appear in the original source.

Effectively Summarizing

A summary should be brief. Usually when summarizing a source, you will have a certain goal with a summary, so you want to do your best to 1) convey the spirit of the text (you don't want to misrepresent the source's ideas) and 2) pick only the details you need to achieve your point or fill your reader in. Relaying too many points can hurt the point of the summary.

The “Ingredients” for a Summary Paragraph

1. Genre (essay, article, biography, memoir, video, book)

2. Title of the work. Use quotation marks around an article or essay title. Be sure to italicize book titles.  

3.  Author’s name (first and last in first sentence. Last only when referred to afterward)

4. Signal verb (the verb in the first sentences that describe what the author “does” (e.g., tells, contends, argues, states)  

5. Main idea: after the signal verb, convey the central or main idea of the entire piece you are summarizing. This will extend the signal phrase into a complete sentence.

6. After this first sentence, summarize the main points, so the reader has a good general idea of what the piece is about. Approximately 5-10 sentences, depending on the length of the source piece.

A summary relates the author’s main idea and the points they use to explain, support, or defend that point. It gives readers the gist of the text without having to read it themselves.

Example Summary Paragraph

Here is an example of a summary beginning with a signal phrase. Note the superscript numbers in parentheses; these correspond to the summary and signal phrase “ingredients” listed above.

⁽¹⁾ In the chapter, ⁽²⁾ “Pineapple’s Coming of Age,” ⁽¹⁾ from the book ⁽²⁾ Fire in the Ashes, ⁽³⁾ Jonathan Kozol ⁽⁴⁾ studies ⁽⁵⁾ the educational experience of a girl named Pineapple beginning in a poor elementary school and ending with attending college. ⁽⁶⁾ Pineapple grew up in poverty in a dangerous and crime-ridden neighborhood. The school she attended had high teacher turnover and crowding which led to poor learning of basic skills for the children. Her family life, however, was extremely loving and supportive. Pineapple was outgoing and intelligent despite learning gaps caused by the poor school. She attracted the attention of Kozol and a worker at a local church who were able to secure a scholarship for Pineapple to attend private schools for the remainder of her education. She struggled in private schools academically and socially, but thanks to caring teachers and her own persistence she made improvements every year and was able to graduate and later attend college.

Kozol, Jonathan. Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-five Years among the Poorest Children in America. Crown, 2012.

 

Sometimes when summarizing in an essay you may not want a full paragraph, so the first sentence of the summary will be best to use followed by a sentence that list the main points with less elaboration.

Exercise 21.3a: Analyzing an Example Summary

Directions: Closely read the original source and then discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the sample summary below.

Original Source:  

According to the research firm Mintel International, eleven new home antibacterial products appeared on the market in 2004, more than twice the number [that appeared]

in 2003. The makers of antibacterial products are fond of the word germs. It is purposefully vague. Do they mean bacteria? Viruses? Both? Neither? The idea is simply to suggest contamination. These products are as much about cooties as they are about viruses or bacteria. 

However, the fantasy of a germ-free home is not only absurd, but it is also largely pointless. The few hundred bacteria on a countertop, doorknob, or spoon pose no threat. The bacteria that cause food poisoning, the only significant rational bacterial worry in the average home, need to multiply into the thousands or millions before they can overwhelm your immune system and cause symptoms. 

Not surprisingly, a study by Dr. Elaine Larson at the Columbia School of Nursing called into question the usefulness of antibacterial products for the home. In New York, 224 households, each with at least one preschooler, were randomly assigned to two groups. One group used antibacterial cleaning, laundry, and hand-washing products. The other used ordinary products. 

For forty-eight weeks, the groups were monitored for seven symptoms of colds, flu, and food poisoning, and found to be essentially the same. According to research conducted by University of Arizona microbiologist Dr. Charles Gerba, an active adult touches an average of 300 surfaces every thirty minutes. You cannot win at this. You will become obsessive-compulsive. Just wash your hands with soap and water a few times a day and leave it at that. (Roach 2004) 

Roach, Mary. 2004. “Germs, Germs Everywhere.” New York Times, November 9, 2004. 

Summary:  

According to Mary Roach, author of the New York Times article “Germs, Germs Everywhere,” the antibacterial product industry is booming in spite of the fact that these products do not do much good. Advertisements for these products promise that they will kill “germs,” but the bacteria in the average home are not really dangerous. One study found that the use of antibacterial products does not seem to prevent colds, flu, or food poisoning. Another study found that since adults touch so many surfaces, no one could be able to wipe them all clean. Therefore, the author recommends that people simply wash their hands several times a day and forget about trying to sterilize their homes. 

Exercise 21.3b: Summary Practice

1) Summarize the following passage from Annie Dillard's essay "The Chase". Be sure to include a signal phrase.

Some boys taught me to play football. This was fine sport. You thought up a new strategy for every play and whispered it to the others. You went out for a pass, fooling everyone. Best, you got to throw yourself mightily at someone’s running legs. Either you brought him down or you hit the ground flat on your chin, with your arms empty before you. It was all or nothing. If you hesitated in fear, you would miss and get hurt: you would take a hard fall while the kid got away, or you would get kicked in the face while the kid got away. But if you flung yourself wholeheartedly at the back of his knees — if you gathered and joined body and soul and pointed them diving fearlessly — then you likely wouldn’t get hurt, and you’d stop the ball. Your fate, and your team’s score, depended on your concentration and courage. Nothing girls did could compare with it.

2) Summarize the following passage from Nicholas Carr's article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", published in The Atlantic in 2008. Be sure to include a signal phrase.

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

3) Work on writing a two to three-sentence summary of an essay you have read in your EG 101 course. Begin by introducing the source and then tell the main point. Remember, your job in a summary is to "get the gist" of the text while putting it in your own words, so read the essay until you understand it, and then write the summary from your head or notes rather than looking at the original while you write.

For more help, see this page on summarizing, including a video and examples of effective summarizing from the Writing Commons.