How to Write a Summary

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

How to Write a Summary

Writing a good summary demonstrates that you can understand the text clearly. Writing summaries aren’t that easy, until you get to use to writing them more often. Once you have successfully written a few summary’s you’ll be able to write them quicker and easier.

Step 1) Skim over the text you are going to summarize and divide it into sections. Make sure to pay attention to any headings or subheadings since those are going to be what the text will be talking about. Also look for bold-faced terms/words and make sure you know what they mean before reading so you aren’t held back once you get to writing the summary.

Step 2) Now that you’re prepared, read all the text. Read the whole thing from beginning to end and don’t stumble over things you don’t understand cause you’ll look deeper into those matters later. Just make sure you get to know the authors tone, style and main idea.

Step 3) Reread the text while underlining topic sentences. Label or highlight areas that are important and you think should be included in your summary. Avoid areas that are to specific, even though they may be interesting you don’t want to rewrite the text you just need the main ideas and key points of the text.

Step 4) You should now be able to do the first 3 steps quite well for the future. Since you’ve already divided the text into sections and found all the main ideas and key points, you want to write the main idea of each section into a well-thought sentence, not including minor details, only the main ideas. Check out my Summary of the Hunger Games.

Step 5) This is very important for any summary, to have a theses statement. A single sentence that basically tells the reader what your whole summary is about. For example my thesis statement is “Writing a good summary demonstrates that you can understand the text clearly”. Writing a good summary is what all of this is about, so your thesis statement should be able to sum everything your summary is about. If your are unable to write a these statement you might want to look over what you’ve written already, make sure your sentences are about the main ideas and key points.

Step 6) Now your rough draft is basically done and you’re on to your final draft. You can use the thesis statement as the introductory of your summary, and the other sentences make up the body. Here are some tips to remember while writing the final draft of you summary:

• Write in present tense.
• Use transactions words like, first, then, however, also, after that, finally, those help with the structure and flow of your summary.
• If you used words from the author, make sure to cite them.
• Don’t include your opinions or ideas, the summary is about what the author wrote not what you think about it.

 Step 7) Reread your summary and check for grammar, punctuation and that the summary makes sense. Rewrite any sentences that are hard to understand, just make sure to keep it about main ideas and key points.

After writing many summary’s you will be able to skip some of these steps since you’ll already know what to do and how to handle things. Summary’s will come a lot easier to you and you’ll learn how to write better summary’s.