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Guidelines for writing a comprehensive summary.

(adapted from a document by Patricia Costa, 20 August 2000)

Defining characteristics:

  1. A summary includes all the main ideas of the original text but in shorter, condensed form and in your own words.
  2. A summary begins with the thesis and continues with all the main ideas which support that thesis.
  3. These ideas are arranged in order of importance.
  4. The first sentence of a summary refers to the source that is summarized. If you use APA Style, use an APA Style author-date reference
  5. A summary is written in the present tense.
  6. A summary does not contain your personal evaluation of the text; it is objective.

How to prepare a summary:

Read the essay, noting in the margin what you think is the main idea and the points that support it. Try to formulate the thesis in one sentence and keep revising your statement of the thesis until you are satisfied that it reflects your understanding of the essay and that it ties together all the principal points of support.

While no summary is perfect, we can speak of greater or lesser degrees of exactness in reporting the main ideas of what you have read. Since a summary contains the author’s thesis and all main supporting ideas, a summary can be evaluated for its completeness.

Keep your reader in mind: a summary is written for a reader who has not seen the essay you have read, but who needs to know its principal points, and its principal points only.

Verify your draft summary (thesis and principal points of support) by reading the essay several times more and checking for comprehensiveness.

While its length may vary, a summary is written as a unified paragraph and should read well. Check your draft summary for precision and concision. This means that nouns and verbs should express content clearly and you should cut out all useless words. Choose transitions carefully so as to indicate clearly how points of support relate to one another. Finally, check for grammar, spelling and punctuation.

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