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What Is A Summary

The document discusses how to write a summary. It states that a summary condenses ideas and information from a text into a few sentences without adding your own thoughts. It also notes that summaries are used in writing exploratory, argumentative, and summary-analysis-response essays. The document provides steps for writing a summary, including underlining topic sentences, rewriting them in your own words, and condensing the main ideas into a short, concise summary without copying wording or structure from the original text.

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Lilian Ruiz
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407 views4 pages

What Is A Summary

The document discusses how to write a summary. It states that a summary condenses ideas and information from a text into a few sentences without adding your own thoughts. It also notes that summaries are used in writing exploratory, argumentative, and summary-analysis-response essays. The document provides steps for writing a summary, including underlining topic sentences, rewriting them in your own words, and condensing the main ideas into a short, concise summary without copying wording or structure from the original text.

Uploaded by

Lilian Ruiz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is a Summary?

A summary condenses ideas and information into as few sentences as possible. A summary does
not add your own thoughts. Summary is used in writing many sorts of papers such as Explaining
Essays, as well as Argument essays. Summary is also a part of your work in producing Summary,
Analysis and Response essays, which you will use in preparing your Research paper and
Annotated Bibliography.
Steps to Summarize
1. Underline the topic sentence of each paragraph.
2. Write that sentence in your own words on the side of the page or on another piece of
paper.
3. When you finish the article, read all the topic sentences you marked or wrote down.
4. In your own words, re-write those main ideas.
5. Use complete sentences with good transition words.
6. Be sure you don't use the same words, phrases or sentence structure of the original. See:
How to Paraphrase.
7. You may find you need to leave out some of the unimportant details.
8. Your summary should be as short and concise as possible.

How can one write a summary?

Delete unimportant portions of the article.

Delete redundant material from the article.

If there is a set or list of items, events, or acts, organize


them under a superordinate term.

Decide what the main idea of the article is and then write a
topic sentence for your summary.

What is a "topic sentence"?


This is the sentence that contains the main idea of your
summary. It is usually the first, as well as the most general,
sentence of the summary. You create a topic sentence by
figuring out what the main idea of the article is, and then
rewriting it in your own words. (NOTE: Failure to rewrite
other people's ideas in your own words, and then including
the original words in your work without mentioning the
original author, is called plagiarism.)

WARNING:
In U.S. academic culture, plagiarism is a serious offense.
Committing plagiarism can result in being expelled from a
university. Therefore, it is in your best interest to learn
paraphrasing skills.

What is "paraphrasing"?
We can define paraphrasing as restating (or rewriting) someone else's ideas using our
own words. Often it is used to make the meaning clearer -- either to one's
reader/audience, or to oneself.

What are some "paraphrasing skills"?


Here are some suggested paraphrasing strategies (adapted from Wecklser 1995):
When paraphrasing: Be sure to include all the information in the original excerpt. To paraphrase
you can do a number of things.
1. Use synonyms:
ORIGINAL: People think it is asocial to sit at a computer terminal at a cafe.
PARAPHRASE: People think it is anti-social to sit at a computer terminal at a cafe.

2. Use different forms of a word (noun --> verb; adverb --> adjective, etc.):
ORIGINAL: Many girls model themselves after their mothers.

PARAPHRASE: Many girls use their mothers as models.

3. Change the connectors/transitions, making sure to make any grammatical changes


that are necessary:
ORIGINAL: Computers are expensive; however, the prices are coming down.
PARAPHRASE: Computers are expensive, but the prices are coming down.
4. Change active sentences to passive ones (and vice-versa):
ORIGINAL: Most of the students of the IEI attended the fall picnic.
PARAPHRASE: The fall picnic was attended by most of the IEI students.
5. Change negative to affirmative, or vice-versa:
ORIGINAL: All the political parties disagreed on that particular issue.
PARAPHRASE: None of the political parties agreed on that particular issue.
6. Avoid giving your own opinion or new information when paraphrasing.
7. Avoid changing vocabulary items in certain fields, such as science, technology,
education, government, geography (but sometimes you can paraphrase some
geographical names), language, brand names, or ordinary, everyday words that have no
synonyms, such as dictionary, chair, or toothbrush.
8. To avoid plagiarism: ALWAYS cite your sources. You can do this by writing an
introductory clause (which can be written or spoken in several ways) which mentions the
author and title of your source, for example,
1. In "Scientists Use Fiber Optic Network as Internet Alternative", the author
syas/writes/states/informs...
2. Deborah Shapley, in an article entitled, "Scientists Use Fiber Optic Network as
Internet Alternative," expresses/ states/writes/etc....
9. If the information in the statement is common knowledge, you do not need to cite
the source. For example, if you heard about something of major importance on the six
o'clock news that was broadcast all over the country or world, citing the specific source is
not crucial, although you should cite specific details and statements about this happening.

10. BEWARE of using a bilingual dictionary or a thesaurus when you paraphrase, because
some synonyms are quite different in meaning or usage. (For instance, one dictionary
gives change, vary, convert, and transmute as synonyms, and then gives separate
definitions for each.)
ORIGINAL: Cybercafes are changing the face of coffee shops worldwide.
PARAPHRASE: Cybercafes are transmuting the face of coffee shops worldwide.
(Incorrect synonym)
11. Be sure that the meaning of your paraphrase is the same as that of the original statement.

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