In the end, you will have read, digested, and reconstructed the text in a shorter, more concise form. A point made in the beginning of an essay and then one made toward the end may need to be grouped together in your summary to concisely convey the argument that the author is making. In order to write a good summary, you may have to gather minor points or components of an argument from different places in the text in order to summarize the text in an organized way. However, for the sake of clarity, a summary should present the author’s points in a straightforward structure. They may not state the thesis or main idea immediately at the beginning, but rather build up to it slowly, and they may introduce a point of development in one place and then return to it later in the text. Not all writers use such a straightforward structure.
However, you should not assume that this will always be the case. If a text is organized in a linear fashion, you may be able to write a summary simply by paraphrasing the major points from the beginning of the text to the end. It is a reconstruction of the major point or points of development of a text, beginning with the thesis or main idea, followed by the points or details that support or elaborate on that idea. Instead, a summary is a distillation of the ideas or argument of the text. It is important to remember that a summary is not an outline or synopsis of the points that the author makes in the order that the author gives them. You may include some very brief summary within a literature paper, but only as much as necessary to make your own interpretation, your thesis, clear. If you are writing a literature paper, for example, your teacher probably does not want you to simply write a plot summary.
When you analyze a piece of writing, you generally summarize the contents briefly in order to establish for the reader the ideas that your essay will then go on to analyze, but a summary is not a substitute for the analysis itself. A summary, on the other hand, does not require you to critique or respond to the ideas in a text. An analysis is a discussion of ideas, techniques, and/or meaning in a text. Many students make the mistake of confusing summary with analysis. Instead, you should extract only those elements that you think are most important-the main idea (or thesis) and its essential supporting points, which in the original passage may have been interwoven with less important material. To include every detail is neither necessary nor desirable. To summarize is to condense a text to its main points and to do so in your own words. When you write a summary, you are demonstrating your understanding of the text and communicating it to your reader. When you underline and annotate a text, when you ask yourself questions about its contents, when you work out an outline of its structure, you are establishing your understanding of what you are reading. THE WRITING PROCESS Guidelines for Writing a Summary
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