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Summary: Using it Wisely

What this handout is about.

Knowing how to summarize something you have read, seen, or heard is a valuable skill, one you have probably used in many writing assignments. It is important, though, to recognize when you must go beyond describing, explaining, and restating texts and offer a more complex analysis. This handout will help you distinguish between summary and analysis and avoid inappropriate summary in your academic writing.

Is summary a bad thing?

Not necessarily. But it’s important that your keep your assignment and your audience in mind as you write. If your assignment requires an argument with a thesis statement and supporting evidence—as many academic writing assignments do—then you should limit the amount of summary in your paper. You might use summary to provide background, set the stage, or illustrate supporting evidence, but keep it very brief: a few sentences should do the trick. Most of your paper should focus on your argument. (Our handout on argument will help you construct a good one.)

Writing a summary of what you know about your topic before you start drafting your actual paper can sometimes be helpful. If you are unfamiliar with the material you’re analyzing, you may need to summarize what you’ve read in order to understand your reading and get your thoughts in order. Once you figure out what you know about a subject, it’s easier to decide what you want to argue.

You may also want to try some other pre-writing activities that can help you develop your own analysis. Outlining, freewriting, and mapping make it easier to get your thoughts on the page. (Check out our handout on brainstorming for some suggested techniques.)

Why is it so tempting to stick with summary and skip analysis?

Many writers rely too heavily on summary because it is what they can most easily write. If you’re stalled by a difficult writing prompt, summarizing the plot of The Great Gatsby may be more appealing than staring at the computer for three hours and wondering what to say about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s use of color symbolism. After all, the plot is usually the easiest part of a work to understand. Something similar can happen even when what you are writing about has no plot: if you don’t really understand an author’s argument, it might seem easiest to just repeat what he or she said.

To write a more analytical paper, you may need to review the text or film you are writing about, with a focus on the elements that are relevant to your thesis. If possible, carefully consider your writing assignment before reading, viewing, or listening to the material about which you’ll be writing so that your encounter with the material will be more purposeful. (We offer a handout on reading towards writing .)

How do I know if I’m summarizing?

As you read through your essay, ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I stating something that would be obvious to a reader or viewer?
• Does my essay move through the plot, history, or author’s argument in chronological order, or in the exact same order the author used?
• Am I simply describing what happens, where it happens, or whom it happens to?

A “yes” to any of these questions may be a sign that you are summarizing. If you answer yes to the questions below, though, it is a sign that your paper may have more analysis (which is usually a good thing):

• Am I making an original argument about the text?
• Have I arranged my evidence around my own points, rather than just following the author’s or plot’s order?
• Am I explaining why or how an aspect of the text is significant?

Certain phrases are warning signs of summary. Keep an eye out for these:

• “[This essay] is about…”
• “[This book] is the story of…”
• “[This author] writes about…”
• “[This movie] is set in…”

Here’s an example of an introductory paragraph containing unnecessary summary. Sentences that summarize are in italics:

The Great Gatsby is the story of a mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby, who lives alone on an island in New York. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the book, but the narrator is Nick Carraway. Nick is Gatsby’s neighbor, and he chronicles the story of Gatsby and his circle of friends, beginning with his introduction to the strange man and ending with Gatsby’s tragic death. In the story, Nick describes his environment through various colors, including green, white, and grey. Whereas white and grey symbolize false purity and decay respectively, the color green offers a symbol of hope.

Here’s how you might change the paragraph to make it a more effective introduction:

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald provides readers with detailed descriptions of the area surrounding East Egg, New York. In fact, Nick Carraway’s narration describes the setting with as much detail as the characters in the book. Nick’s description of the colors in his environment presents the book’s themes, symbolizing significant aspects of the post-World War I era. Whereas white and grey symbolize the false purity and decay of the 1920s, the color green offers a symbol of hope.

This version of the paragraph mentions the book’s title, author, setting, and narrator so that the reader is reminded of the text. And that sounds a lot like summary—but the paragraph quickly moves on to the writer’s own main topic: the setting and its relationship to the main themes of the book. The paragraph then closes with the writer’s specific thesis about the symbolism of white, grey, and green.

How do I write more analytically?

Analysis requires breaking something—like a story, poem, play, theory, or argument—into parts so you can understand how those parts work together to make the whole. Ideally, you should begin to analyze a work as you read or view it instead of waiting until after you’re done—it may help you to jot down some notes as you read. Your notes can be about major themes or ideas you notice, as well as anything that intrigues, puzzles, excites, or irritates you. Remember, analytic writing goes beyond the obvious to discuss questions of how and why—so ask yourself those questions as you read.

The St. Martin’s Handbook (the bulleted material below is quoted from p. 38 of the fifth edition) encourages readers to take the following steps in order to analyze a text:

• Identify evidence that supports or illustrates the main point or theme as well as anything that seems to contradict it.
• Consider the relationship between the words and the visuals in the work. Are they well integrated, or are they sometimes at odds with one another? What functions do the visuals serve? To capture attention? To provide more detailed information or illustration? To appeal to readers’ emotions?
• Decide whether the sources used are trustworthy.
• Identify the work’s underlying assumptions about the subject, as well as any biases it reveals.

Once you have written a draft, some questions you might want to ask yourself about your writing are “What’s my point?” or “What am I arguing in this paper?” If you can’t answer these questions, then you haven’t gone beyond summarizing. You may also want to think about how much of your writing comes from your own ideas or arguments. If you’re only reporting someone else’s ideas, you probably aren’t offering an analysis.

What strategies can help me avoid excessive summary?

• Read the assignment (the prompt) as soon as you get it. Make sure to reread it before you start writing. Go back to your assignment often while you write. (Check out our handout on reading assignments ).
• Formulate an argument (including a good thesis) and be sure that your final draft is structured around it, including aspects of the plot, story, history, background, etc. only as evidence for your argument. (You can refer to our handout on constructing thesis statements ).
• Read critically—imagine having a dialogue with the work you are discussing. What parts do you agree with? What parts do you disagree with? What questions do you have about the work? Does it remind you of other works you’ve seen?
• Make sure you have clear topic sentences that make arguments in support of your thesis statement. (Read our handout on paragraph development if you want to work on writing strong paragraphs).
• Use two different highlighters to mark your paper. With one color, highlight areas of summary or description. With the other, highlight areas of analysis. For many college papers, it’s a good idea to have lots of analysis and minimal summary/description.
• Ask yourself: What part of the essay would be obvious to a reader/viewer of the work being discussed? What parts (words, sentences, paragraphs) of the essay could be deleted without loss? In most cases, your paper should focus on points that are essential and that will be interesting to people who have already read or seen the work you are writing about.

But I’m writing a review! Don’t I have to summarize?

That depends. If you’re writing a critique of a piece of literature, a film, or a dramatic performance, you don’t necessarily need to give away much of the plot. The point is to let readers decide whether they want to enjoy it for themselves. If you do summarize, keep your summary brief and to the point.

Instead of telling your readers that the play, book, or film was “boring,” “interesting,” or “really good,” tell them specifically what parts of the work you’re talking about. It’s also important that you go beyond adjectives and explain how the work achieved its effect (how was it interesting?) and why you think the author/director wanted the audience to react a certain way. (We have a special handout on writing reviews that offers more tips.)

If you’re writing a review of an academic book or article, it may be important for you to summarize the main ideas and give an overview of the organization so your readers can decide whether it is relevant to their specific research interests.

If you are unsure how much (if any) summary a particular assignment requires, ask your instructor for guidance.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Barnet, Sylvan. 2015. A Short Guide to Writing about Art , 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Corrigan, Timothy. 2014. A Short Guide to Writing About Film , 9th ed. New York: Pearson.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Zinsser, William. 2001. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction , 6th ed. New York: Quill.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Everything You Need To Know About Writing a Summary

Wondering why summary writing is important? Knowing how to compose one is an essential skill not just for students but for anyone who wants to understand and communicate complex ideas clearly. In this post, we’ll provide five easy steps and more to teach you how to write a summary.

Table of Contents

What is a summary, how to write a summary in five easy steps, example of a summary, tips on writing a good summary.

Mastering the art of summary writing is crucial, but do you know why? Well, you might be surprised to learn that knowing how to craft one can help you become a better learner and communicator. If you have yet to sharpen this skill set, don’t worry. Below, we’ll go through five easy steps to write a good summary , complete with examples and tips.

Let’s begin!

A summary is a concise distillation of a larger body of work that briefly but thoroughly encapsulates its main ideas and essential points. It is designed to give the reader a clear understanding of the original project without needing to read it in full.  

Being able to restate in your own words what you’ve just read is a sign that you’ve truly absorbed and understood the information. In contrast, merely memorizing facts is not a good indication of comprehension. In other words, if you can’t concisely summarize something, you haven’t fully grasped the concept.

The word summary is a noun that refers to the “concise but comprehensive rewriting of an original body of work.”

• I had to write a summary of one of Mark Twain’s stories.

The verb form of this word is to summarize , which means “to provide a summary of something.”

• She missed the presentation, so I summarized it for her.

Now that we’ve reviewed what a summary entails, let’s get to the fun part: writing one!

Keep in mind that summaries can encompass a wide range of subjects, including books, articles, movies, meetings, and more. Also, a summarization isn’t necessarily always confined to writing; you can verbally summarize something, too. However, the steps below are designed to help you compose a written summary.

1. Read and take notes. 

First things first: Read or watch the original work you’ll be summarizing. While you do, take brief pauses and explain to yourself what you just read or watched. As the main ideas start becoming clear to you, take notes. This will make the writing process easier.

2. Start with an introductory sentence.

In academic and formal contexts, summaries typically begin with an introductory sentence that states the work’s title and author. This sets the stage for the reader by immediately identifying what is being discussed. However, if the work has already been identified, it may not be necessary to start with the title and author. For example, if you’re in a class that is currently discussing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, then you may not need to include that information in the introduction.

3. Explain the main points.

Identify and elaborate on the main arguments or messages, and seek supporting evidence, topic sentences, or thesis statements .

It’s also a good idea to focus on the what, how, and why:

• What are the key ideas or events?
• How do they develop throughout the work?
• Why are they important to the work’s overall message?

Remember, be selective in what you include. Summaries are about the bigger picture, not the small details. 

4. Organize your summary to ensure a smooth flow.

Your summary should be coherent and easy to read. Therefore, you should use transition words to ensure logical progression from one idea to the next. It’s best to structure your summary similarly to the original work. Despite being a condensed version, it should still stand on its own as a cohesive piece of writing. In other words, ensure that there is a clear beginning, middle, and end.

5. Conclude by restating the author’s thesis. 

Finish your summary with a clear statement that effectively captures the author’s main argument or purpose. Keep in mind that the conclusion of a summary should not introduce new information but instead provide a sense of closure. This will leave the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the original text.

Imagine you’re taking a class on Shakespeare, and you’re assigned to write a one-paragraph summary of Romeo and Juliet. It should be similar to the following example:

“Romeo and Juliet” is a tragic play that tells the story of two young, star-crossed lovers. It begins with a street brawl between servants from the wealthy Montague and Capulet families and ends with two shocking deaths that ultimately reconcile a long-time feud. Romeo, a Montague, falls in love with Juliet, a Capulet, at a masquerade ball. Despite their families’ conflict, they marry in secret. After Romeo is banished for avenging the death of his friend, Juliet fakes her death to be with him. The plan goes awry, leading to Romeo and Juliet’s actual deaths. When the families learn of the tragic sequence of events, they decide to end their bitter feud once and for all.

It’s important to note that the length of the summary depends on the assignment’s instructions. It is possible to write a longer summary of Romeo and Juliet, if needed, by providing some more details and elaborating on the play’s themes.

How Long Should a Summary Be?

Some guidelines suggest that summaries should be 10%-30% of the original work, so it often depends on the complexity of the text and the intended purpose. If you’re writing a summary for school and are unsure how long it should be, ask your instructor for clarification.

As you work on your summary, keep the following tips in mind:

Take notes as you read.

We already mentioned this, but it’s worth reiterating. Taking notes as you read the original work is an easy way to simplify the summary writing process. The notes don’t have to be extensive; they just have to help you remember the important points.

Use your own words.

Don’t just copy and paste from the original work. Instead, analyze it and restate it. Imagine you and a friend just read an article. You understand it, but your friend doesn’t. You wouldn’t just reread it, hoping that a second reading would miraculously become clearer, right? No, you’d reword it. That’s precisely what you have to do when writing a summary.

Do not include opinions or interpretations.

A summary’s purpose is to restate the original text concisely. Avoid writing about your opinions or judgments about the work, and do not include elaborate interpretations.

Ensure proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

You can follow all the steps above and even ensure you abide by these tips. But if your summary is riddled with errors, it won’t be as effective. A simple way to ensure flawless spelling, grammar, and punctuation is to use LanguageTool as your personal writing assistant. Not only will it correct any mistakes, but it will also enhance your style. Plus, it supports more than thirty languages and dialects, so whether you’re writing in your native tongue or your second language, your instructors will be utterly impressed with your prose.

Go ahead and give it a try today!

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Using a Summary in Academic Writing

Discussed in this post:

What is a summary

How to use a summary in your writing, when should you use a summary in academic writing.

Summary  

Using a summary in an assignment is a way to convey the main ideas or relevant themes of another piece of research.

If you want to analyse ideas, research, data, and information created by researchers and draw conclusions from across the published research you may use a summary in your writing to do this.

Summarising is a critical thinking tool that requires you to engage with the subject matter and describe it in your own words.

This is important because you need to understand a topic or theme before you can summarise it in a way that will make sense in the context of your coursework.

A summary is a concise description of the key points discussed in a source.  The summary will cover the important points from the published material in a few sentences without changing the meaning.

The summary can provide an overview of the most important points, ideas or arguments of the original text or a single point.

Written in your own words a summary explains the point or points raised by the original author and includes a citation referencing the published source of the information.

Learning to summarise and incorporate a summary into your academic writing is an important skill for students. 

Students are exposed to large volumes of information in lectures, seminar groups, and individual research. 

Being able to create a summary of the main points, discussion elements, and conclusions can be helpful when writing assignments and coursework where you need to bring these elements together.

Using a summary you can build an overview of a topic, collate similar ideas from multiple authors and provide context for your own research question.

Use a summary to process information

Throughout your academic journey, you will read and listen to vast amounts of information and opinions, so much, it will be impossible to remember it all.  Writing notes in your own words will help you learn and understand the information.   

It takes effort to listen, read and understand new information.  Summarising new information through notetaking is one way of processing that helps comprehension.

By taking notes, you can organise the new information in a way that makes it easier to understand and remember.  

Writing notes that summarise the key ideas, concepts, themes, and data in your subject area builds a strong reference tool that you can rely on throughout your academic career. 

Use a summary to create an overview

Building your own reference library of notes through summarising your reading will help you create a "bigger picture" of the research in your field that you can draw on in your assignments. 

Describing the subject-level overview using published research will allow you to position your research and observations within context. 

Demonstrating your understanding of the subject and how your research will contribute to the overall field.

Using your library of notes will allow you to be more productive with the time you have available by using your notes to direct your research efforts and maximise your time for new research and writing. 

Use a summary for future research

Notes that summarise the sources you have read will be useful in future research if you can trust and rely on them.  

Good quality notes should include references to key themes and concepts you have researched and learned as well as full bibliographic citations so you can reference and cite the source giving your writing credibility. 

Use citations for every summary

When you’re summarizing someone else’s work or your own previously published work, you need to follow the right citation style so readers can follow up.

In the Harvard Referencing style after the summary, you would cite the author’s surname, year of publication, and page number.

In the APA Referencing style the author’s name and date of publication are required and a page number isn’t mandatory but is recommended.

Similar to any other time you use someone else’s research, ideas, data or concepts in your assignment or writing, you must include an in-text citation and reference to avoid plagiarism and acknowledge the original author.

You should use a summary in academic writing when you need to provide a brief overview of a longer piece of writing or text, such as an article, book, or research paper.

Here are some specific situations where using a summary could be useful:

Introducing a topic

Summarizing a research study or literature review

Clarifying a point

Providing context

If you are writing about a complex or unfamiliar topic, you may want to use a summary to provide a brief introduction or overview of the key points.

If you are writing a research paper or literature review , you may need to summarize the main findings or arguments of previous studies or research articles.

If you are making a complex argument, you may need to use a summary to clarify a particular point or to provide evidence to support your argument.

If you are using a quotation or reference to a longer piece of writing, you may want to use a summary to provide context for the quotation or reference.

A summary is a useful tool for conveying the main ideas or arguments of a longer piece of writing in a concise and clear way. Use it wisely and appropriately to support your arguments and enhance the clarity of your writing.

Using a summary in your assignment can be a useful way to include the main ideas of another source.

If you understand the meaning and content of the source, you can translate it into your own words and incorporate into your coursework assignment.

A summary must not change the meaning of the source or include any personal opinion about the information, this is not the goal.

When including a summary in your writing the aim should be to enhance your writing, demonstrating the scope of your research and how your research question is related to subject area.

Introducing APA Referencing

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How to Write a Summary (Examples Included)

By Ashley Shaw

Have you ever recommended a book to someone and given them a quick overview? Then you’ve created a summary before!

Summarizing is a common part of everyday communication. It feels easy when you’re recounting what happened on your favorite show, but what do you do when the information gets a little more complex?

Written summaries come with their own set of challenges. You might ask yourself:

• What details are unnecessary?
• How do you put this in your own words without changing the meaning?
• How close can you get to the original without plagiarizing it?
• How long should it be?

The answers to these questions depend on the type of summary you are doing and why you are doing it.

A summary in an academic setting is different to a professional summary—and both of those are very different to summarizing a funny story you want to tell your friends.

One thing they all have in common is that you need to relay information in the clearest way possible to help your reader understand. We’ll look at some different forms of summary, and give you some tips on each.

Let’s get started!

What Is a Summary?

How do you write a summary, how do you write an academic summary, what are the four types of academic summaries, how do i write a professional summary, writing or telling a summary in personal situations, summarizing summaries.

A summary is a shorter version of a larger work. Summaries are used at some level in almost every writing task, from formal documents to personal messages.

When you write a summary, you have an audience that doesn’t know every single thing you know.

When you want them to understand your argument, topic, or stance, you may need to explain some things to catch them up.

Instead of having them read the article or hear every single detail of the story or event, you instead give them a brief overview of what they need to know.

Academic, professional, and personal summaries each require you to consider different things, but there are some key rules they all have in common.

Let’s go over a few general guides to writing a summary first.

1. A summary should always be shorter than the original work, usually considerably.

Even if your summary is the length of a full paper, you are likely summarizing a book or other significantly longer work.

2. A summary should tell the reader the highlights of what they need to know without giving them unnecessary details.

3. It should also include enough details to give a clear and honest picture.

For example, if you summarize an article that says “ The Office is the greatest television show of all time,” but don’t mention that they are specifically referring to sitcoms, then you changed the meaning of the article. That’s a problem! Similarly, if you write a summary of your job history and say you volunteered at a hospital for the last three years, but you don’t add that you only went twice in that time, it becomes a little dishonest.

4. Summaries shouldn’t contain personal opinion.

While in the longer work you are creating you might use opinion, within the summary itself, you should avoid all personal opinion. A summary is different than a review. In this moment, you aren’t saying what you think of the work you are summarizing, you are just giving your audience enough information to know what the work says or did.

Now that we have a good idea of what summaries are in general, let’s talk about some specific types of summary you will likely have to do at some point in your writing life.

An academic summary is one you will create for a class or in other academic writing. The exact elements you will need to include depend on the assignment itself.

However, when you’re asked for an academic summary, this usually this means one of five things, all of which are pretty similar:

• You need to do a presentation in which you talk about an article, book, or report.
• You write a summary paper in which the entire paper is a summary of a specific work.
• You summarize a class discussion, lesson, or reading in the form of personal notes or a discussion board post.
• You do something like an annotated bibliography where you write short summaries of multiple works in preparation of a longer assignment.
• You write quick summaries within the body of another assignment . For example, in an argumentative essay, you will likely need to have short summaries of the sources you use to explain their argument before getting into how the source helps you prove your point.

Regardless of what type of summary you are doing, though, there are a few steps you should always follow:

• Skim the work you are summarizing before you read it. Notice what stands out to you.
• Next, read it in depth . Do the same things stand out?
• Put the full text away and write in a few sentences what the main idea or point was.
• Go back and compare to make sure you didn’t forget anything.
• Expand on this to write and then edit your summary.

Each type of academic summary requires slightly different things. Let’s get down to details.

How Do I Write a Summary Paper?

Sometimes teachers assign something called a summary paper . In this, the entire thing is a summary of one article, book, story, or report.

To understand how to write this paper, let’s talk a little bit about the purpose of such an assignment.

A summary paper is usually given to help a teacher see how well a student understands a reading assignment, but also to help the student digest the reading. Sometimes, it can be difficult to understand things we read right away.

However, a good way to process the information is to put it in our own words. That is the point of a summary paper.

A summary paper is:

• A way to explain in our own words what happened in a paper, book, etc.
• A time to think about what was important in the paper, etc.
• A time to think about the meaning and purpose behind the paper, etc.

Here are some things that a summary paper is not:

• A review. Your thoughts and opinions on the thing you are summarizing don’t need to be here unless otherwise specified.
• A comparison. A comparison paper has a lot of summary in it, but it is different than a summary paper. In this, you are just saying what happened, but you aren’t saying places it could have been done differently.
• A paraphrase (though you might have a little paraphrasing in there). In the section on using summary in longer papers, I talk more about the difference between summaries, paraphrases, and quotes.

Because a summary paper is usually longer than other forms of summary, you will be able to chose more detail. However, it still needs to focus on the important events. Summary papers are usually shorter papers.

Let’s say you are writing a 3–4 page summary. You are likely summarizing a full book or an article or short story, which will be much longer than 3–4 pages.

Imagine that you are the author of the work, and your editor comes to you and says they love what you wrote, but they need it to be 3–4 pages instead.

How would you tell that story (argument, idea, etc.) in that length without losing the heart or intent behind it? That is what belongs in a summary paper.

How Do I Write Useful Academic Notes?

Sometimes, you need to write a summary for yourself in the form of notes or for your classmates in the form of a discussion post.

You might not think you need a specific approach for this. After all, only you are going to see it.

However, summarizing for yourself can sometimes be the most difficult type of summary. If you try to write down everything your teacher says, your hand will cramp and you’ll likely miss a lot.

Yet, transcribing doesn’t work because studies show that writing things down (not typing them) actually helps you remember them better.

So how do you find the balance between summarizing the lessons without leaving out important points?

There are some tips for this:

• If your professor writes it on the board, it is probably important.
• What points do your textbooks include when summarizing information? Use these as a guide.
• Write the highlight of every X amount of time, with X being the time you can go without missing anything or getting tired. This could be one point per minute, or three per five minutes, etc.

How Do I Create an Annotated Biography?

An annotated bibliography requires a very specific style of writing. Often, you will write these before a longer research paper . They will ask you to find a certain amount of articles and write a short annotation for each of them.

While an annotation is more than just a summary, it usually starts with a summary of the work. This will be about 2–3 sentences long. Because you don’t have a lot of room, you really have to think about what the most important thing the work says is.

This will basically ask you to explain the point of the article in these couple of sentences, so you should focus on the main point when expressing it.

Here is an example of a summary section within an annotation about this post:

“In this post, the author explains how to write a summary in different types of settings. She walks through academic, professional, and personal summaries. Ultimately, she claims that summaries should be short explanations that get the audience caught up on the topic without leaving out details that would change the meaning.”

Can I Write a Summary Within an Essay?

Perhaps the most common type of summary you will ever do is a short summary within a longer paper.

For example, if you have to write an argumentative essay, you will likely need to use sources to help support your argument.

However, there is a good chance that your readers won’t have read those same sources.

So, you need to give them enough detail to understand your topic without spending too much time explaining and not enough making your argument.

While this depends on exactly how you are using summary in your paper, often, a good amount of summary is the same amount you would put in an annotation.

Just a few sentences will allow the reader to get an idea of the work before moving on to specific parts of it that might help your argument.

What’s the Difference Between Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Using Quotes?

One important thing to recognize when using summaries in academic settings is that summaries are different than paraphrases or quotes.

A summary is broader and more general. A paraphrase, on the other hand, puts specific parts into your own words. A quote uses the exact words of the original. All of them, however, need to be cited.

Let’s look at an example:

Take these words by Thomas J. Watson:

”Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t as all. You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where you will find success.”

Let’s say I was told to write a summary, a paraphrase, and a quote about this statement. This is what it might look like:

Summary: Thomas J. Watson said that the key to success is actually to fail more often. (This is broad and doesn’t go into details about what he says, but it still gives him credit.)

Paraphrase: Thomas J. Watson, on asking if people would like his formula for success, said that the secret was to fail twice as much. He claimed that when you decide to learn from your mistakes instead of being disappointed by them, and when you start making a lot of them, you will actually find more success. (This includes most of the details, but it is in my own words, while still crediting the source.)

Quote: Thomas J. Watson said, ”Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where you will find success.” (This is the exact words of the original with quotation marks and credit given.)

Avoiding Plagiarism

One of the hardest parts about summarizing someone else’s writing is avoiding plagiarism .

That’s why I have a few rules/tips for you when summarizing anything:

1. Always cite.

If you are talking about someone else’s work in any means, cite your source. If you are summarizing the entire work, all you probably need to do (depending on style guidelines) is say the author’s name. However, if you are summarizing a specific chapter or section, you should state that specifically. Finally, you should make sure to include it in your Work Cited or Reference page.

2. Change the wording.

Sometimes when people are summarizing or paraphrasing a work, they get too close to the original, and actually use the exact words. Unless you use quotation marks, this is plagiarism. However, a good way to avoid this is to hide the article while you are summarizing it. If you don’t have it in front of you, you are less likely to accidentally use the exact words. (However, after you are done, double check that you didn’t miss anything important or give wrong details.)

3. Use a plagiarism checker.

Of course, when you are writing any summary, especially academic summaries, it can be easy to cross the line into plagiarism. If this is a place where you struggle, then ProWritingAid can help.

Just use our Plagiarism Report . It’ll highlight any unoriginal text in your document so you can make sure you are citing everything correctly and summarizing in your own words.

Find out more about ProWritingAid plagiarism bundles.

Along with academic summaries, you might sometimes need to write professional summaries. Often, this means writing a summary about yourself that shows why you are qualified for a position or organization.

In this section, let’s talk about two types of professional summaries: a LinkedIn summary and a summary section within a resume.

How Do I Write My LinkedIn Bio?

LinkedIn is all about professional networking. It offers you a chance to share a brief glimpse of your professional qualifications in a paragraph or two.

This can then be sent to professional connections, or even found by them without you having to reach out. This can help you get a job or build your network.

Your summary is one of the first things a future employer might see about you, and how you write yours can make you stand out from the competition.

Here are some tips on writing a LinkedIn summary :

• Before you write it, think about what you want it to do . If you are looking for a job, what kind of job? What have you done in your past that would stand out to someone hiring for that position? That is what you will want to focus on in your summary.
• Be professional . Unlike many social media platforms, LinkedIn has a reputation for being more formal. Your summary should reflect that to some extent.
• Use keywords . Your summary is searchable, so using keywords that a recruiter might be searching for can help them find you.
• Focus on the start . LinkedIn shows the first 300 characters automatically, and then offers the viewer a chance to read more. Make that start so good that everyone wants to keep reading.
• Focus on accomplishments . Think of your life like a series of albums, and this is your speciality “Greatest Hits” album. What “songs” are you putting on it?

How Do I Summarize My Experience on a Resume?

Writing a professional summary for a resume is different than any other type of summary that you may have to do.

Recruiters go through a lot of resumes every day. They don’t have time to spend ages reading yours, which means you have to wow them quickly.

To do that, you might include a section at the top of your resume that acts almost as an elevator pitch: That one thing you might say to a recruiter to get them to want to talk to you if you only had a 30-second elevator ride.

If you don’t have a lot of experience, though, you might want to skip this section entirely and focus on playing up the experience you do have.

Outside of academic and personal summaries, you use summary a lot in your day-to-day life.

Whether it is telling a good piece of trivia you just learned or a funny story that happened to you, or even setting the stage in creative writing, you summarize all the time.

How you use summary can be an important consideration in whether people want to read your work (or listen to you talk).

Here are some things to think about when telling a story:

• Pick interesting details . Too many and your point will be lost. Not enough, and you didn’t paint the scene or give them a complete idea about what happened.
• Play into the emotions . When telling a story, you want more information than the bare minimum. You want your reader to get the emotion of the story. That requires a little bit more work to accomplish.
• Focus. A summary of one story can lead to another can lead to another. Think about storytellers that you know that go off on a tangent. They never seem to finish one story without telling 100 others!

To wrap up (and to demonstrate everything I just talked about), let’s summarize this post into its most essential parts:

A summary is a great way to quickly give your audience the information they need to understand the topic you are discussing without having to know every detail.

How you write a summary is different depending on what type of summary you are doing:

• An academic summary usually gets to the heart of an article, book, or journal, and it should highlight the main points in your own words. How long it should be depends on the type of assignment it is.
• A professional summary highlights you and your professional, academic, and volunteer history. It shows people in your professional network who you are and why they should hire you, work with you, use your talents, etc.

Being able to tell a good story is another form of summary. You want to tell engaging anecdotes and facts without boring your listeners. This is a skill that is developed over time.

Take your writing to the next level:

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Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is a former editor and marketer/current PhD student and teacher. When she isn't studying con artists for her dissertation, she's thinking of new ways to help college students better understand and love the writing process. You can follow her on Twitter, or, if you prefer animal accounts, follow her rabbits, Audrey Hopbun and Fredra StaHare, on Instagram.

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Quickly Teach How to Write a Summary With Clear Examples and Stems

How to write a summary with clear examples, a template, and a formula to help you teach summary writing to your elementary students.  

It’s the first day of school. You’ve given your students the classic summary writing assignment : “What I Did Over Summer Break.”

One student dives in and begins writing a personal narrative to rival War and Peace.

Another (maybe more than one) groans and lays their head down in despair.

You’ve seen this, right?

This summer vacation prompt might be one of the most difficult assignments we can give some of your elementary students. For others students, it might be the easiest.

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Table of Contents

The Summary Writing Assignment From Days of Yore

This year, instead of giving the typical summary writing assignment, perhaps you could read an interesting article or story together, and have your students write a summary about that.

Now, in all honesty, and with full disclosure, I have to admit this assignment isn’t always the best choice either. Why? It’s because at the beginning of the year, students are out of practice with writing, and some may not have learned how to write a summary yet.

This blog will help you with a simple system to teach summary writing with ease, using templates, graphic organizers and a step-by-step plan.

How to Start Teaching How to Write a Summary at the Beginning of the School Year

First of all, define what a summary is for your students. Next, define what it isn’t. Last, don’t let them start writing until you’ve modeled the process and done a think aloud with them.

Teaching how to write a summary isn’t a one and done lesson. You’ll be revisiting pieces and parts of the summary time after time. You’ll know when your students finally have it, because they’ll be able to write a summary in just a few minutes.

How Fast Can a Student Write a One Page Summary?

It was the beginning of the year. My student cried and laid his head in his hands. He struggled with writing, didn’t like it, and gave some push back with every assignment.

Gradually, with accommodations, scaffolding, and several meetings in small group writer’s workshops, his writing began to emerge. His eyes sparkled every time he showed me how much his writing had improved.

One day, I gave an assignment, and this student turned it in inside of Google Classroom in about ten minutes.

I said, “Hey, I don’t think you could have done a stellar job so quickly.”

The student assured me, “Yes, I did my best, I edited and revised it, and I think it’s perfect.”

Not wanting to seem curmudgeonly, I pulled up the document and read it out loud with the student. I was so surprised and pleased because it was absolutely the best summary they had turned in that year. Wow!

At that moment, I knew the student understood how to write a summary that sparkled!

Things to Include in a Summary

• Main idea of the article in one sentence. 
• One or two important details.
• Transition words.

The students must read the article, once, twice, possibly three times before writing the summary. It all depends on the text complexity and the reading level of the student. You can read it with students, too. 

If you choose to read it with them, read it once to get the overall ideas. Read it a second time to annotate important points. Read it a third time to clarify any doubts and to really get to the understanding of the text.

What NOT to Include in a Summary

• Thoughts or reflections about the content.
• Conclusion statements are optional.

It’s important to make sure your students understand that summary writing and opinion writing are two different things. I use the acronym, JTFF.

Just the Facts, Friend!

If a student starts writing includes opinions, reminiscences, comparisons with their own experiences, etc., all you need to say is,

Grading tip: If a student adds opinions or personal thoughts to a summary, simply write the letters JTFF over that part of their writing. They’ll know what you mean.

Using a Template or Formula to Teach Summary Writing

• Graphic organizer to use while reading.
• Sentence stems for the introduction.
• Format to follow like a step-by-step guide
• Use scaffolds

This is where we get to the meaty part of the lesson. I’m going to lay out the parts of my simple system for teaching summary writing. You want to simplify writing a summary as much as possible, and this is how you can do it. It’s not a bad thing to use a template or formula.

In addition, have an entire blog post dedicated to some of the most effect Scaffolds for Teaching Writing  to help you differentiate the writing lessons for your students. You don’t need anything special to use them. You can incorporate them into your teaching today.

• Read the article to get the overall ideas.
• Read the article again using a graphic organizer. My suggestion is that you use the same graphic organizer for summaries every time. This prevents students from having to learn how to navigate a graphic organizer while they’re trying to learn to write a summary.
• Students annotate the text and make notes of important ideas in the graphic organizer.
• Use a sentence stem for the introduction. Include the article title, the author’s name, a verb such as “tells”, “reports,” “defines,” etc., and the main idea.
• Write the important points about the main idea in the summary, usually in the present tense.

Examples of Writing a Summary Sentence Introduction

The summary sentence template looks like this:

The article (or story) —Title of Article— by —Author’s Name— tells —Main Idea—.

For example:

The story The First Day Jitters, by Julie Danneberg tells about what happens when Sarah Jane Hartwell is afraid to go to her new school.

Another example: 

The blog article “Preventing Summer Slide”, by Suzanne Pitner gives several ideas to keep children entertained and learning during the summer break.

Yet another example:

According to the blog post “Santa Claus Tracking”, by Suzanne Pitner, NORAD has been tracking Santa since 1955 as he makes his annual trip around the world.

A great way to practice this is to have your students write a one sentence summary starter about their favorite books, or books they read over the summer. Practice this all the time in every context of summary writing.

The Body of the Summary

For young learners, and for English learners, having a format or a template to follow is similar to having a recipe on hand. In the same way you follow a recipe step by step, students can follow a template step by step.

• First, write the opening summary sentence. (See the template above.)
• Next, add one or two important facts or details about the article or book.
• Finally, include transition words, or linking words.

Did you notice the simple yet obvious transition words I used in this template? That’s perfect for teaching elementary students how to write. Let them master the obvious transition words first. Later they can learn how to write more subtle, nuanced transitions.

Transition Words for Writing Summaries in Elementary School

These are a few ideas of transitions appropriate for younger grades. Your textbook, if you have one, may have more transitions and examples of linking words. I found these to be the simplest to implement in classes of 8 to 11 year-old learners.

• First, next, last
• First, second, third
• One thing, another thing, finally
• In the beginning, in the middle, in the end
• To begin, to continue, in the end

These summaries help them organize their thoughts in a sequential order that makes sense for the writing task at hand.

Summary Tool in Google Docs (TM)

Google Docs (™) has a tool to use to help teach summaries. Depending on the article, it may or may not provide a simple, one or two sentence summary. 

You can use this to identify key points to include while summary writing. It’s also a great way to get a classroom conversation going about the following questions:

• Is this an adequate summary?
• Did it give enough information to make the reader want to read the article?
• Is anything missing from this summary?

Please note that my impression of this tool is that it’s designed for web writing and short articles. It’s not a replacement for the actual summary you’ll be teaching your students to write.

Here’s how to access the Summary Tool in Google Docs (™).

• In your top bar, click on “View.”
• Click on “Show Outline.”
• Click on the “plus” sign next to the word Summary.

If you found this article helpful in teaching summary writing in your classroom, please consider signing up to receive my free handbook, Building Strong Writers With Simple Systems. You’ll be added to my email list so you won’t ever miss a post about teaching writing. Thanks, friend!

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• Peterborough

Writing Article Summaries

• Understanding Article Summaries 

Common Problems in Article Summaries

Read carefully and closely, structure of the summary, writing the summary.

• Sample Outlines and Paragraphs

Understanding Article Summaries

An article summary is a short, focused paper about one scholarly article that is informed by a critical reading of that article. For argumentative articles, the summary identifies, explains, and analyses the thesis and supporting arguments; for empirical articles, the summary identifies, explains, and analyses the research questions, methods, findings, and implications of the study.

Although article summaries are often short and rarely account for a large portion of your grade, they are a strong indicator of your reading and writing skills. Professors ask you to write article summaries to help you to develop essential skills in critical reading, summarizing, and clear, organized writing. Furthermore, an article summary requires you to read a scholarly article quite closely, which provides a useful introduction to the conventions of writing in your discipline (e.g. Political Studies, Biology, or Anthropology).

The most common problem that students have when writing an article summary is that they misunderstand the goal of the assignment. In an article summary, your job is to write about the article, not about the actual topic of the article. For example, if you are summarizing Smith’s article about the causes of the Bubonic plague in Europe, your summary should be about Smith’s article: What does she want to find out about the plague? What evidence does she use? What is her argument? You are not writing a paper about the actual causes of Bubonic plague in Europe.

Further, as a part of critical reading, you will often consider your own position on a topic or an argument; it is tempting to include an assessment or opinion about the thesis or findings, but this is not the goal of an article summary. Rather, you must identify, explain, and analyse the main point and how it is supported.

Your key to success in writing an article summary is your understanding of the article; therefore, it is essential to read carefully and closely. The Academic Skills Centre offers helpful instruction on the steps for critical reading: pre-reading, active and analytical reading, and reflection.

Argumentative Articles

As you read an argumentative article, consider the following questions:

• What is the topic?
• What is the research question? In other words, what is the author trying to find out about that topic?
• How does the author position his/her article in relation to other studies of the topic?
• What is the thesis or position? What are the supporting arguments?
• How are supporting arguments developed? What kind of evidence is used?
• What is the significance of the author’s thesis? What does it help you to understand about the topic?

Empirical Articles

As you read an empirical article, consider the following questions:

• What is the research question?
• What are the predictions and the rationale for these predictions?
• What methods were used (participants, sampling, materials, procedure)? What were the variables and controls?
• What were the main results?
• Are the findings supported by previous research?
• What are the limitations of the study?
• What are the implications or applications of the findings?

Create a Reverse Outline

Creating a reverse outline is one way to ensure that you fully understand the article. Pre-read the article (read the abstract, introduction, and/or conclusion). Summarize the main question(s) and thesis or findings. Skim subheadings and topic sentences to understand the organization; make notes in the margins about each section. Read each paragraph within a section; make short notes about the main idea or purpose of each paragraph. This strategy will help you to see how parts of the article connect to the main idea or the whole of the article.

A summary is written in paragraph form and generally does not include subheadings. An introduction is important to clearly identify the article, the topic, the question or purpose of the article, and its thesis or findings. The body paragraphs for a summary of an argumentative article will explain how arguments and evidence support the thesis. Alternatively, the body paragraphs of an empirical article summary may explain the methods and findings, making connections to predictions. The conclusion explains the significance of the argument or implications of the findings. This structure ensures that your summary is focused and clear.

Professors will often give you a list of required topics to include in your summary and/or explain how they want you to organize your summary. Make sure you read the assignment sheet with care and adapt the sample outlines below accordingly.

One significant challenge in writing an article summary is deciding what information or examples from the article to include. Remember, article summaries are much shorter than the article itself. You do not have the space to explain every point the author makes. Instead, you will need to explain the author’s main points and find a few excellent examples that illustrate these points.

You should also keep in mind that article summaries need to be written in your own words. Scholarly writing can use complex terminology to explain complicated ideas, which makes it difficult to understand and to summarize correctly. In the face of difficult text, many students tend to use direct quotations, saving them the time and energy required to understand and reword it. However, a summary requires you to summarize, which means “to state briefly or succinctly” (Oxford English Dictionary) the main ideas presented in a text. The brevity must come from you, in your own words, which demonstrates that you understand the article.

Sample Outlines and Paragraph

Sample outline for an argumentative article summary.

• General topic of article
• Author’s research question or approach to the topic
• Author’s thesis
• Explain some key points and how they support the thesis
• Provide a key example or two that the author uses as evidence to support these points
• Review how the main points work together to support the thesis?
• How does the author explain the significance or implications of his/her article?

Sample Outline for an Empirical Article Summary

• General topic of study
• Author’s research question
• Variables and hypotheses
• Participants
• Experiment design
• Materials used
• Key results
• Did the results support the hypotheses?
• Implications or applications of the study
• Major limitations of the study

Sample Paragraph

The paragraph below is an example of an introductory paragraph from a summary of an empirical article:

Tavernier and Willoughby’s (2014) study explored the relationships between university students’ sleep and their intrapersonal, interpersonal, and educational development. While the authors cited many scholars who have explored these relationships, they pointed out that most of these studies focused on unidirectional correlations over a short period of time. In contrast, Tavernier and Willoughby tested whether there was a bidirectional or unidirectional association between participants’ sleep quality and duration and several psychosocial factors including intrapersonal adjustment, friendship quality, and academic achievement. Further they conducted a longitudinal study over a period of three years in order to determine whether there were changes in the strength or direction of these associations over time. They predicted that sleep quality would correlate with measures of intrapersonal adjustment, friendship quality, and academic achievement; they further hypothesized that this correlation would be bidirectional: sleep quality would predict psychosocial measures and at the same time, psychosocial measures would predict sleep quality.

Narrative Essay

How to write a summary.

Proficient students understand that  summarizing , identifying what is most important and restating the text (or other media) in your own words, is an important tool for college success.

After all, if you really know a subject, you will be able to summarize it. If you cannot summarize a subject, even if you have memorized all the facts about it, you can be absolutely sure that you have not learned it. And, if you truly learn the subject, you will still be able to summarize it months or years from now.

Proficient students may monitor their understanding of a text by summarizing as they read. They understand that if they can write a one- or two-sentence summary of each paragraph after reading it, then that is a good sign that they have correctly understood it. If they can not summarize the main idea of the paragraph, they know that comprehension has broken down and they need to use fix-up strategies to repair understanding.

Summary Writing Format

• When writing a summary, remember that it should be in the form of a paragraph.
• A summary begins with an introductory sentence that states the text’s title, author and main point of the text as you see it.
• A summary is written in your own words.
• A summary contains only the ideas of the original text. Do not insert any of your own opinions, interpretations, deductions or comments into a summary.
• Identify in order the significant sub-claims the author uses to defend the main point.
• Copy word-for-word three separate passages from the essay that you think support and/or defend the main point of the essay as you see it.
• Cite each passage by first signaling the work and the author, put “quotation marks” around the passage you chose, and put the number of the paragraph where the passages can be found immediately after the passage.
• Using source material from the essay is important. Why? Because defending claims with source material is what you will be asked to do when writing papers for your college professors.
• Write a last sentence that “wraps” up your summary; often a simple rephrasing of the main point.

Example Summary Writing Format

In the essay Santa Ana , author Joan Didion’s main point is ( state main point ). According to Didion “… passage 1 …” (para.3). Didion also writes “… passage 2 …” (para.8). Finally, she states “… passage 3 …” (para. 12) Write a last sentence that “wraps” up your summary; often a simple rephrasing of the main point.

• Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : http://lumenlearning.com/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Paul Powell. Provided by : Central Community College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Elisabeth Ellington and Ronda Dorsey Neugebauer. Provided by : Chadron State College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution

How to Write a Great Summary

A summary is a shorter description of a longer work, covering all of the highlights but not many of the details. It’s used for an overview so that people can get an idea of what the longer work entails without reading or watching it first. 

You see summaries everywhere, from book covers to product descriptions to online review sites. However, no matter how many summaries you’ve read, it can still be difficult to write your own when you need to. 

In this quick guide, we explain how to write a summary like an expert. We share some summary examples and list out the steps. But first, let’s look at the big question:

What is a summary?

Really, a summary is a general term used to describe any writing that briefly explains, or “summarizes,” a larger work like a novel, academic paper, movie, or TV show. Summaries are usually short, from one or two sentences to a paragraph, but if you’re summarizing an enormous work, like all seven Harry Potter books, they can stretch out over pages. 

Summary writing is like a highlight reel, showing only the best parts and ignoring what’s not strictly necessary. A summary example of Hamlet would mention the main plot points like the murder of Polonius, but wouldn’t mention details irrelevant to the plot, like Polonius’s “to thine own self be true” monologue. 

The key to summary writing is to stick to the facts; do not include opinions, analysis, or bias. If it’s written for commercial purposes, such as the summaries on Netflix, it might be intentionally alluring and withhold spoilers. However, for academic papers and more formal writing, summary writing leans towards factual and clinical. 

Summaries appear in many different shapes and forms, including book reports and other school papers. Academics use summaries all the time for research papers when they write an abstract , which is essentially a summary of an entire research paper. 

Really, everyone needs to know how to write a summary at one point or another. Even finding a job requires you to summarize your own professional background and work experience. Learning how to write a good LinkedIn summary can help you land your dream job!

Summary examples: What makes a good summary

Let’s look at some summary examples of famous works to see what constitutes a strong summary. 

On IMDb , the summary for the 2008 movie The Dark Knight is just a sentence long: 

When the menace known as the Joker wreaks havoc and chaos on the people of Gotham, Batman must accept one of the greatest psychological and physical tests of his ability to fight injustice.

Right away, you’ll notice that the specific events of the movie are omitted and replaced by a general explanation of what happens. The main characters are mentioned—at least the protagonist and antagonist—and there is some description given about the types of events, such as “psychological and physical tests.” 

However, the details are absent. To summarize a two-hour movie in a single sentence requires broad strokes; there’s only room for the bare essentials. 

Most summaries, though, are longer than a sentence, like this multi-paragraph summary example for the novel To Kill a Mockingbird from SparkNotes . 

As you can see, this summary is about the length of a page. It’s far more detailed, too, mentioning secondary characters and adding more context to the plot events. Still, to condense 281 pages into one requires a lot of cutting, so each key event is given just a sentence or two, consisting of only the need-to-know information. 

How to write a summary in 4 steps

Summary writing uses the same best tips for all good writing . If you want to know how to write a summary yourself, we break the process down into 4 basic steps. 

1 Read or watch the source material

The first step is fairly obvious: Read or watch whatever it is you’re writing a summary about. 

If you’re doing a book report or similar paper, there’s always a temptation to skip this step and just rely on other people’s summaries. We don’t recommend it, though. For starters, how can you trust the writer of that summary? What if they just wrote their summary based on another person’s summary, too? Moreover, you may miss some key points or events that the other summary overlooked. 

The only risk-free way to write a summary is to read or watch the source material yourself. Otherwise you’re liable to miss something essential. 

2 Make a list of the key points

Next comes the outlining phase , where you list out what points to include in your summary. How many items go on your list depends on the length of both the summary and the source material. If you’re running long, start cutting items that are less of a priority. 

It always helps to use your memory at first. The most significant events will have left an impact on you, so using what you remember is a good filter for what’s vital. However, learn to separate what’s truly necessary and what’s just personal preference. Just because you fell in love with a secondary character doesn’t mean they’re worth mentioning in the summary. 

To fill in the gaps of what you’ve missed, you may need to reread or rewatch your source material. Feel free to skim it to save time; you just need to map out the significant points, not reread every word. 

Here’s a tip:   For longer pieces, break the source into sections and make a separate list for each section. For example, if you’re summarizing a research paper, you might write different lists for the Methods, Results, and Conclusion sections respectively. This is optional but helps you organize everything for larger works. 

3 Write the summary in your own words

Next, write the first draft of your summary following the lists you made in the previous outlining stage. If you’re summarizing a book, film, or other media, it’s best to use chronological order (even if the story is told out of order). 

The key here is using your own words. While you’re free to copy the occasional direct quote in your summary writing, it’s best to use original language to make it your own. Also, keep in mind the perspective of someone who’s never read or seen the source material. Do you have all the relevant points they need to understand what’s going on? 

Here’s a tip: Pay close attention to transitions. Summaries are naturally fast-paced, where sentences often jump from one event or point to another in rapid succession. For a reader, this can be very jarring. 

To make your summary writing easier to comprehend, use plenty of transitional words and phrases, such as however , as a result , and meanwhile . You’ll find a more complete list in our guide to transition words and phrases . 

4 Edit and cut what’s unnecessary 

Last comes the proofreading phase, where you reread your summary and correct any mistakes or awkward wording. For summary writing, watch out for unnecessary information, too; every word is crucial, so removing unnecessary information gives you more room to elaborate on the main points. 

Grammarly can save you a lot of time in this step. Grammarly marks any grammar and spelling mistakes you make while you write and provides quick recommendations on how to fix them. This frees you up to focus on more important aspects of summary writing, like the points you’re trying to make. 

Grammarly even helps with conciseness , which is integral to summary writing. If you’re using five words to say what can be said in two, Grammarly points it out so you can fix it. That way, your summaries can be as short and compact as possible—the way summary writing is supposed to be!

Introduction

Goals and Goal Setting

Goals Common to All RST Writers

Other Goals to Consider

Defining My Own Goals

Advice about Assignments

Getting Started: Listing Topics to Write about in the Tutorial

Narrative One: Personal Piece on a Significant Experience

Narrative Two: Academic Piece on a Significant Experience

Summary/Response One

Summary/Response Two

Tutorial Evaluation Postscript

On Using the Resources for Writers

Generating and Developing Ideas

Finding/Expressing Main Ideas

Showing v. Telling Sentences

Focusing Topic Sentences

Thesis Statements

Reading Strategies

Assessing Your Reading Strategies

Summarizing

Writing Effective Summary and Response Essays

Discourse Analysis Worksheet

Trade Magazines

Selecting Readings

A summary is a concise paraphrase of all the main ideas in an essay. It cites the author and the title (usually in the first sentence); it contains the essay's thesis and supporting ideas; it may use direct quotation of forceful or concise statements of the author's ideas; it will NOT usually cite the author's examples or supporting details unless they are central to the main idea. Most summaries present the major points in the order that the author made them and continually refer back to the article being summarized (i.e. "Damon argues that ..." or "Goodman also points out that ... "). The summary should take up no more than one-third the length of the work being summarized.

The Response:

A response is a critique or evaluation of the author's essay. Unlike the summary, it is composed of YOUR opinions in relation to the article being summarized. It examines ideas that you agree or disagree with and identifies the essay's strengths and weaknesses in reasoning and logic, in quality of supporting examples, and in organization and style. A good response is persuasive; therefore, it should cite facts, examples, and personal experience that either refutes or supports the article you're responding to, depending on your stance.

Two Typical Organizational Formats for Summary/Response Essays:

1. Present the summary in a block of paragraphs, followed by the response in a block:

Intro/thesis Summary (two to three paragraphs) Agreement (or disagreement) Disagreement (or agreement) Conclusion

Note: Some essays will incorporate both agreement and disagreement in a response, but this is not mandatory.

2. Introduce the essay with a short paragraph that includes your thesis. Then, each body paragraph summarizes one point and responds to it, and a conclusion wraps the essay up.

Intro/thesis Summary point one; agree/disagree Summary point two; agree/disagree Summary point three; agree/disagree Conclusion

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• Knowledge Base
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• How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

Published on 25 September 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 12 May 2023.

Summarising , 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 analysing 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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Table of contents

When to write a summary, step 1: read the text, step 2: break the text down into sections, step 3: identify the key points in each section, step 4: write the summary, step 5: check the summary against the article, frequently asked questions.

There are many situations in which you might have to summarise 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 analyse or critique it.

In any case, the goal of summarising is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

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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?

To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organised into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction, methods, results, and discussion.

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part.

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement —the central claim that the author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of the author’s key points.

Examples of article summaries

Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarise this article , which scientifically investigates the old saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’.

An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an article.

For example, in a literature review or research paper, you may want to briefly summarize this study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style , but it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation generators.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

• You’ve accurately represented the author’s work
• You haven’t missed any essential information
• The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarising many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.

A summary is a short overview of the main points of an article or other source, written entirely in your own words.

Save yourself some time with the free summariser.

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; it depends on the length of the article you’re summarising, and on the purpose of the summary.

With the summariser tool you can easily adjust the length of your summary.

You might have to write a summary of a source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to prove you understand the material
• For your own use, to keep notes on your reading
• To provide an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
• In a paper , to summarise or introduce a relevant study

To avoid plagiarism when summarising an article or other source, follow these two rules:

• Write the summary entirely in your own words by   paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
• Reference the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

An abstract concisely explains all the key points of an academic text such as a thesis , dissertation or journal article. It should summarise the whole text, not just introduce it.

An abstract is a type of summary , but summaries are also written elsewhere in academic writing . For example, you might summarise a source in a paper , in a literature review , or as a standalone assignment.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, May 12). How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 18 September 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/working-sources/how-to-write-a-summary/

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Academic Integrity at MIT

A handbook for students, search form, summarizing.

A summary is a synthesis of the key ideas of a piece of writing, restated in your own words – i.e., paraphrased.  You may write a summary as a stand-alone assignment or as part of a longer paper.  Whenever you summarize, you must be careful not to copy the exact wording of the original source.

How do I summarize?

A good summary:

Identifies the writer of the original text.

Synthesizes the writer’s key ideas.

Presents the information neutrally.

Summaries can vary in length.  Follow the directions given by your instructor for how long the summary should be.

An example of summarizing:

Original text:

America has changed dramatically during recent years. Not only has the number of graduates in traditional engineering disciplines such as mechanical, civil, electrical, chemical, and aeronautical engineering declined, but in most of the premier American universities engineering curricula now concentrate on and encourage largely the study of engineering science.  As a result, there are declining offerings in engineering subjects dealing with infrastructure, the environment, and related issues, and greater concentration on high technology subjects, largely supporting increasingly complex scientific developments. While the latter is important, it should not be at the expense of more traditional engineering.

Rapidly developing economies such as China and India, as well as other industrial countries in Europe and Asia, continue to encourage and advance the teaching of engineering. Both China and India, respectively, graduate six and eight times as many traditional engineers as does the United States. Other industrial countries at minimum maintain their output, while America suffers an increasingly serious decline in the number of engineering graduates and a lack of well-educated engineers. (169 words)

(Source:  Excerpted from Frankel, E.G. (2008, May/June) Change in education: The cost of sacrificing fundamentals. MIT Faculty Newsletter , XX, 5, 13.)

One-paragraph Summary:

In a 2008 Faculty Newsletter article, “Change in Education: The cost of sacrificing fundamentals,” MIT Professor Emeritus Ernst G. Frankel expresses his concerns regarding the current state of American engineering education.  He notes that the number of students focusing on traditional areas of engineering has decreased while the number interested in the high-technology end of the field has increased.   Frankel points out that other industrial nations produce far more traditionally-trained engineers than we do, and believes we have fallen seriously behind. (81 words)

Why is this a good summary?

The summary identifies the writer, the date of publication, and the source, and restates the key ideas using original wording.  The summary reports on the author’s point of view, but reports this neutrally.

One-line summary:

MIT Professor Emeritus Ernst G. Frankel (2008) has called for a return to a course of study that emphasizes the traditional skills of engineering, noting that the number of American engineering graduates with these skills has fallen sharply when compared to the number coming from other countries. (47 words)

This one-line summary identifies the writer and synthesizes the key ideas.  A short summary like this might appear in the literature review of research paper in which the student gathers together the findings or opinions of scholars on a given subject.

What is the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing?

Summarizing and paraphrasing are somewhat different. A paraphrase is about the same length as the original source, while a summary is much shorter. Nevertheless, when you summarize, you must be careful not to copy the exact wording of the original source. Follow the same rules as you would for paraphrase.

Writing Summaries

A summary is a short overview of the main points of a text. The purpose of a summary is to quickly give the reader or listener an idea of what this material is saying. You may find it helpful to create summaries of your own work, but more often, you will create summaries of material by other authors, such as articles, plays, films, lectures, stories, or presentations.

Why Summarize?

At some point in your classes, you will likely be given an assignment to summarize a specific text, an assignment in which summary is the sole intent. You will also use summaries in more holistic ways, though, incorporating them along with paraphrase, quotation, and your own opinions into more complex pieces of writing. You might summarize for several reasons, both in your time as a student and in your life outside of education.

Here are some common ones:

• A summary can show your understanding of the main points of an assigned reading or viewing, so your instructor might ask you to summarize in order to know that you’ve understood the material.
• You might summarize a section from a source, or even the whole source, when the ideas in that source are critical to an assignment you are working on and you feel they need to be included, but they would take up too much space in their original form.
• You might also summarize when the general ideas from a source are important to include in your work, but the details included in the same section as those main ideas aren’t needed for you to make your point. For example, technical documents or in-depth studies might go into much, much more detail than you are likely to need to support a point you are making for a general audience. These are situations in which a summary might be a good option.
• Summarizing is also an excellent way to double-check that you understand a text–if you can summarize the ideas in it, you likely have a good grasp on the information it is presenting. This can be helpful for school-related work, such as studying for an exam or researching a topic for a paper, but is also useful in daily life when you encounter texts on topics that are personally or professionally interesting to you.

What Makes Something a Summary?

When you ask yourself, after reading an article (and maybe even reading it two or three times), “What was that article about?” and you end up jotting down–from memory, without returning to the original article to use its language or phrases–three things that stood out as the author’s main points, you are summarizing. Summaries have several key characteristics.

You’re summarizing well when you

• Use your own words.
• Significantly condense the original text.
• Provide accurate representations of the main points of the text they summarize.
• Avoid personal opinion.

Summaries are much shorter than the original material—a general rule is that they should be no more than 10% to 15% the length of the original, and they are often even shorter than this.

It can be easy and feel natural, when summarizing an article, to include our own opinions. We may agree or disagree strongly with what this author is saying, or we may want to compare their information with the information presented in another source, or we may want to share our own opinion on the topic. Often, our opinions slip into summaries even when we work diligently to keep them separate. These opinions are not the job of a summary, though. A summary should only highlight the main points of the article.

First , it no longer correctly represents the original text, so it misleads your reader about the ideas presented in that text. A summary should give your reader an accurate idea of what they can expect if we pick up the original article to read.

Second , it undermines your own credibility as an author to not represent this information accurately. If readers cannot trust an author to accurately represent source information, they may not be as likely to trust that author to thoroughly and accurately present a reasonable point.

How Should I Organize a Summary?

Like traditional essays, summaries have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. What these components look like will vary some based on the purpose of the summary you’re writing. The introduction, body, and conclusion of work focused specifically around summarizing something is going to be a little different than in work where summary is not the primary goal.

Introducing a Summary

One of the trickier parts of creating a summary is making it clear that this is a summary of someone else’s work; these ideas are not your original ideas. You will almost always begin a summary with an introduction to the author, article, and publication so the reader knows what we are about to read. This information will appear again in your bibliography, but is also useful here so the reader can follow the conversation happening in your paper. You will want to provide it in both places.

In summary-focused work, this introduction should accomplish a few things:

• Introduce the name of the author whose work you are summarizing.
• Introduce the title of the text being summarized.
• Introduce where this text was presented (if it’s an art installation, where is it being shown? If it’s an article, where was that article published? Not all texts will have this component–for example, when summarizing a book written by one author, the title of the book and name of that author are sufficient information for your readers to easily locate the work you are summarizing).
• State the main ideas of the text you are summarizing—just the big-picture components.
• Give context when necessary. Is this text responding to a current event? That might be important to know. Does this author have specific qualifications that make them an expert on this topic? This might also be relevant information.

So, for example, if you were to get an assignment asking you to summarize Matthew Hutson’s Atlantic article, “ Beyond the Five Senses ” (found at www.theatlantic.com) an introduction for that summary might look something like this:

In his July 2017 article in The Atlantic , “Beyond the Five Senses,” Matthew Hutson explores ways in which potential technologies might expand our sensory perception of the world. He notes that some technologies, such as cochlear implants, are already accomplishing a version of this for people who do not have full access to one of the five senses. In much of the article, though, he seems more interested in how technology might expand the ways in which we sense things. Some of these technologies are based in senses that can be seen in nature, such as echolocation, and others seem more deeply rooted in science fiction. However, all of the examples he gives consider how adding new senses to the ones we already experience might change how we perceive the world around us.

However, you will probably find yourself more frequently using summary as just one component of work with a wide range of goals (not just a goal to “summarize X”).

Summary introductions in these situations still generally need to

• Name the author.
• Name the text being summarized.
• State just the relevant context, if there is any (maybe the author has a specific credential that makes their work on this topic carry more weight than it would otherwise, or maybe the study they generated is now being used as a benchmark for additional research).
• Introduce the author’s full name (first and last names) the first time you summarize part of their text. If you summarize pieces of the same text more than once in a work you are writing, each time you use their text after that initial introduction of the source, you will only use the author’s last name as you introduce that next summary component.

Presenting the “Meat” (or Body) of a Summary

Again, this will look a little different depending on the purpose of the summary work you are doing. Regardless of how you are using summary, you will introduce the main ideas throughout your text with transitional phrasing, such as “One of [Author’s] biggest points is…,” or “[Author’s] primary concern about this solution is….”

If you are responding to a “write a summary of X” assignment, the body of that summary will expand on the main ideas you stated in the introduction of the summary, although this will all still be very condensed compared to the original. What are the key points the author makes about each of those big-picture main ideas? Depending on the kind of text you are summarizing, you may want to note how the main ideas are supported (although, again, be careful to avoid making your own opinion about those supporting sources known).

When you are summarizing with an end goal that is broader than just summary, the body of your summary will still present the idea from the original text that is relevant to the point you are making (condensed and in your own words).

Since it is much more common to summarize just a single idea or point from a text in this type of summarizing (rather than all of its main points), it is important to make sure you understand the larger points of the original text. For example, you might find that an article provides an example that opposes its main point in order to demonstrate the range of conversations happening on the topic it covers. This opposing point, though, isn’t the main point of the article, so just summarizing this one opposing example would not be an accurate representation of the ideas and points in that text.

Concluding a Summary

For writing in which summary is the sole purpose, here are some ideas for your conclusion.

Now that we’ve gotten a little more information about the main ideas of this piece, are there any connections or loose ends to tie up that will help your reader fully understand the points being made in this text? This is the place to put those.

This is also a good place to state (or restate) the things that are most important for your readers to remember after reading your summary.

When your writing has a primary goal other than summary, your conclusion should

• Include an in-text citation, if appropriate. (To learn how to do this correctly, see the discussion of in-text citation in “ Crediting and Citing Your Sources ,” part of the “Using Sources Correctly” section of this text.)
• Discuss the summary you’ve just presented. How does it support, illustrate, or give new information about the point you are making in your writing? Connect it to your own main point for that paragraph so readers understand clearly why it deserves the space it takes up in your work. (Note that this is still not giving your opinion on the material you’ve summarized, just making connections between it and your own main points.)

The Word on College Reading and Writing Copyright © by Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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ELA Brave and True by Marilyn Yung

How to get better “One-Word Summaries” from your students

Make these off-limits: the topic and their opinion

In the past, after I assigned One-Word Summaries , I would often feel a little let down when I walked around the room, glancing over students’ shoulders as they wrote their paragraphs defending their chosen word.

Read my post on the One-Word Summary if you’re unfamiliar with this awesome, low-stakes writing assignment.

I felt let down because, without fail, I would frequently notice a handful of students had chosen words that didn’t actually summarize the text. For example, if the text was about the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. Fire, there would always be at least a couple of kids who would choose “fire.” Another example: if I read the first chapter of The Fault in Our Stars , one or two students would choose words such as “interesting” or “good.”

But those don’t really summarize the text . Sigh .

Fast forward to a recent Friday, when I read the introduction to Coffee Lids : Peel, Pinch, Pucker, Puncture by Louis Harpman and Scott Specht , a book that examines, from a design standpoint, the evolution of the ubiquitous coffee lid.

However, when I decided to skip having kids take sketchnotes while I read, in favor of having them write One-Word Summaries after, I experienced an epiphany and told myself:

“ Before I begin reading, I should tell kids that their one word won’t be the topic of the book, nor will it be their opinion.”

I further explained to students that neither a topic word nor an opinion word reveals and/or summarizes the content of the reading.

“I need you to dig deeper,” I said, adding, “What’s the author really talking about? What’s the bigger idea behind the coffee lids?”

True, the author did write about coffee lids, but she also discussed a deeper idea. “That deeper idea is what I need you to listen for as I read.”

It worked .

Students across both of my junior classes — about thirty-five kids total — responded with words such as innovation, creativity, and improvement… all accurate words that drive at the gist of author Louis Harpman’s introduction.

In fact, only one student turned in a non-summarizing word. (That student’s word was “different.” She explained in her writing that the topic was different and one she had never really thought about before.)

Well, yes, she had a point, but she didn’t have a summary.

By the way, that student is a remote learner. It’s my guess that had she been in the classroom, she would have understood the assignment better than from the video I recorded in class.

This is the best tip I’ve come up with so far to make this assignment work for everyone: again, the word students choose cannot be a topic nor an opinion of the text.

And perhaps a mentor text is what I really need to show students what a summary word does; it provides the gist or the main idea of the text. (Note to self: write a One-Word Summary example.)

If you regularly utilize One-Word Summaries in your classes, what’s your secret to helping kids to truly summarize?

It’s worth the effort to get the most mileage out of the One-Word Summary . This one simple assignment helps kids think critically, and when they write out their summaries (as opposed to an end-of-class “spoken exit ticket” where students state their word and why), you provide your students even more solid writing practice.

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Do You Want Stronger Community? Learn to Read Well.

Review: ‘words for conviviality’ by jeffrey bilbro, more by benjamin myers.

Our attention is in demand, but the quality of our attention often doesn’t matter to those who demand it. Few in our attention economy seek our contemplative focus. Most demand our restless scroll, our aimless click. They seek what Henry David Thoreau describes as our “ macadamized ” mind—thoughts reduced to the size of cobblestones and stuck together randomly.

We may feel the competition for our attention is particularly acute in our time, but Augustine of Hippo felt similar pressure in the fourth century. Augustine longed to turn his attention away from worldly concerns and toward his studies, but he didn’t long to be alone with his books. In his Confessions , Augustine wrote,

To make conversation, to share a joke, to perform mutual acts of kindness, to read together well-written books, to share in trifling and in serious matters, to disagree though without animosity—just as a person debates with himself—and in the very rarity of disagreement to find the salt of normal harmony, to teach each other something or to learn from one another, to long with impatience for those absent, to welcome them with gladness on their arrival. These and other signs come from the heart of those who love and are loved.

Similarly, in Words for Conviviality: Media Technologies and Practices of Hope , Jeffrey Bilbro, associate professor of English at Grove City College, argues that the antidote to a macadamized mind is friendship with the authors who went before us and with the readers who sit beside us. The remedy for the weariness caused by endless demands on our attention isn’t solitude or mindless relaxation but rather books and conversation.

Words for Conviviality: Media Technologies and Practices of Hope

Jeffrey bilbro.

The argument of Words for Conviviality follows a pilgrimage with three stages and considers a set of metaphors authors have deployed to answer three questions: What does industrial print tempt optimistic readers to imagine themselves as? What does it lead its victims to fear they will become? And what alternative metaphors might ground more convivial reading? The metaphors of hope that Jeffrey Bilbro discusses suggest that to wield textual technologies well, we need to develop cultural practices and institutions that strengthen our relationships with one another and our commitment to a common good.

Fragmentation of Techno-Optimism

Our fragmented attention has recently been the subject of many fine books. For example, Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation and Alan Noble’s Disruptive Witness address the problem from a secular and a Christian perspective respectively.

Bilbro looks at the problem through the lens of 19th-century literature. He draws on an impressive list of antebellum writers, including Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, and Margaret Fuller. He also glances backward at American founding figures in the 18th century, such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Rush.

Bilbro argues that new communication technologies are accompanied by a “techno-optimism” that sees technology—be it industrialized print in the 19th century or social media in recent years—as a way of creating a broad and seamless consensus around one authoritative view. Bilbro then examines a pessimistic reaction to this optimism, as those oppressed or exploited by this consensus seek to escape its dominance.

Bilbro’s critique of techno-optimism uncovers intriguing parallels between the 19th century and today. For example, poet Walt Whitman’s characteristic gestures of intimacy with his readers prefigure the self-display that typifies Instagram influencers. Both are hollow at heart, Bilbro argues, as “the intimacy offered by both Whitman and the Insta-poets remains asymmetric: individual readers may feel a powerful emotional connection to the poet who seems to be baring his or her soul. The poets themselves, however, remain detached and aloof from the emotional lives of their readers or fans” (74). Such false company only leaves us lonelier.

Unification Within Little Platoons

We’re more than autonomous, interchangeable consuming units. Human flourishing requires what Edmund Burke called “ little platoons ,” those immediate attachments that give our lives meaning beyond our individual desires. We’re embedded in communities like families, churches, and neighborhoods. Techno-optimism threatens those bonds.

For example, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s techno-optimism imagines each of us as a “ transparent eyeball ” unchained from tradition, community, and kinship, fully equipped to access truth without mediation. Emerson thus contributes to the deterioration of the essential Reformation project of reading the Bible for yourself into the superficial practice of reading the Bible entirely by yourself. His perspective fragments the foundations of the church as a community focused on understanding and applying Scripture together.

We often think of great writers as rebels against the materialist zeitgeist, yet Emerson’s brand of transcendentalist freedom serves the ethos of the atomized consumer . Are you unhindered by any creed? Buy this “coexist” bumper sticker. Buy this Mercedes to put it on. Untethered from mediating and contextualizing communities, we become easy prey for those who sell us new identities each morning. Worse, we become sitting ducks for those who liberate us from tradition only to enslave us to the regime of the moment.

Bilbro offers in juxtaposition to the solipsistic Emerson the notoriously reticent poet Emily Dickinson, demonstrating how Dickinson’s seeming reclusiveness evidences a deeper form of community. Dickinson refused to participate in industrial print, preferring to circulate her work in a more personal, epistolary manner. According to Bilbro, Dickinson “shares her soul’s art in these marginal human and relational contexts because she saw the end of language as well-tended relationships rather than fame or profits” (143). She wrote poems for people she knew personally. If we, too, saw relationships as the goal of writing, perhaps we’d still publish, but would we tweet?

Pilgrimage of Friendship

Yet media technology isn’t the problem. It’s how we use it. We can reject technological determinism and isolating uses of technology and embrace instead a hopeful and convivial use of words. Thoreau, Fuller, Hawthorne, and Melville, for example, “imagined practices that might help us read and write in ways that foster this kind of interdependent, participatory society” (165). This requires a better set of metaphors for reading.

Chief among these metaphors is walking. In the casual stroll and the pilgrimage, we experience the world not as a map we comprehend in total from above but as something we’re in and part of. In walking, we encounter nature and other people at eye level and at a pace that enables focused attention and even conversation.

We should read as if walking. Bilbro writes,

We can read slowly. We can wrestle with old books. We can memorize passages. We can discuss difficult texts with friends who interpret them differently. Further, we can contribute to communities of practice that honor and foster verbal virtues such as attention, magnanimity, care, and patience. (229)

Such communities can exist in our age of fragmented attention and hyperindividualism. Bilbro offers a vision of textual community that can reshape the way Christians view their reading practices.

Words for Conviviality demonstrates that if we wish to create a more convivial world in which conversation predominates over dictation, we must learn to walk again. We must meet each other at eye level, not as all-seeing and autonomous “transparent eyeballs” but, rather, as fellow pilgrims.

Benjamin Myers (PhD, Washington University in St. Louis) is director of Oklahoma Baptist University’s Great Books honors program and professor of literature and English. He was the 2015–16 poet laureate of Oklahoma and is the author of three books of poetry and numerous essays and scholarly articles. He serves as a deacon and Bible study teacher at Chandler First Baptist Church in Chandler, Oklahoma.

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