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Advanced Strategies for Rhetoric and Research
The Practices of Memory
English 190.9
Spring 2004

Summary

What is Summary?

A summary attempts to capture the important turns of argument of a written source. Writers of summaries are expected, as objectively as possible, to present another writer's views. A straight summary should not include the summary writer’s opinions.

Purpose of the Assignment

The need for summarizing appears in a variety of contexts. You may find that you will want to write a summary for yourself as a way to remember something you have read or heard. Additionally, you may be asked by a professor to write a summary that will demonstrate that you have read and understood a text. In your university work, you will most often have to incorporate summarizing ass a starting point on your way to something else. You might first have to summarize before you can analyze a writer's ideas or before you can sue a writer's ideas (with proper acknowledgment, of course) to support a position you wish to take. You also have to summarize other writers' ideas before you can evaluate them. In the latter cases, you will often find yourself thinking of the writer's work and your own in a dialogical relationship: you present a summary of the writer's view as responsibly as possible and then in some way, you respond to it stating your own views. In many of the assignments that you do in your college work, you will probably find that you are using the skills of summary in one or more of these ways.

Because of the ways in which you might find it useful to use the techniques of summary throughout your college work, I am asking write these summaries as if you are doing them as evidence of having read and understood the essays. You can assume that I am your audience and that I have read the essays.

Checklist

The following criteria are a checklist for you to consider as you write. Most summaries attend to the following issues. As a writer, you must realize that your professor's purposes or you own purposes for writing a summary may cause variations in the particular standards your summary needs to meet. A good summary usually includes the following:

• An opening sentence that contains
  • Name of author.
  • Title of piece.
  • Place and date of publication.
  • Main point.
• Additional Information
  • The major subpoint or major turns in the writer's argument.
  • The writer's ideas in paraphrase. Quotations are generally not used.
  • Transitions that articulate clearly the relationship among the writer's ideas.

A good summary will probably NOT include the following:

• Minor points of evidence.
• Your own opinion or evaluation of the reading.

Last Modified: 26 January 2004

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