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The Keys to Writing AN Effective Summary:

What is a summary?

•  A summary is a condensation of large amounts of ideas or information, which is written in YOUR OWN WORDS.

When should a summary be used?

•  Use a summary when you want to borrow a main idea or information from a page, paragraph, or entire article.

How to summarize:

•  Explain - in YOUR OWN WORDS - how supporting points develop the main idea.
•  A summary should reflect only the author's ideas, not your own (see commentary worksheet).
•  Identify the Author, Title, and the Main Idea that you are working with using the correct documentation style required.

Characteristics of an Effective Summary:

•  Focuses on main ideas, rather than minor points
•  Is shorter than the original document
•  Is written in YOUR OWN WORDS
•  Does NOT include quotations
•  Order of Ideas needs to be consistent with the author's purpose, tone, and attitude but does not need to follow original order
•  Should function as an independent text. This means that the reader should be able to come away with a full sense of the original document's content.

Sample Article:

Holidays were once typically days of actual common celebration, of parades, ceremonies, feasts, songs, speeches, and marches. Today, most of this has been replaced by the public holiday's private competitor; the vacation . . . . The vacation is a relatively recent innovation, the product of bourgeois prosperity. The idea that wage earners could take paid vacations is an even more recent development; it only became widespread after World War I. It's fair to say that even in the 1930's and 1940's, ordinary workers spent much more of their leisure time attending parades, carnivals, funerals, executions, and other communal events than they do today, and a good deal less time checking into motels. Today, even solemn public holidays—holidays with as much contemporary meaning as Martin Luther King's birthday—are widely seen as simply more private leisure time, which is why we routinely fiddle with their dates to create three-day weekends.

-Mickey Kaus, from The End of Equality (Paragraph taken from: Spatt, Brenda. Writing From Sources. 4 th ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.)

Test what you know

Why is one summary effective and one not?

Effective Summary :

In The End of Equality, Mickey Kaus explains how holidays have lost their sense of public commemoration to private leisure time. He identifies the rise in prosperity after World War I and the innovation of the vacation as the major sources of this change.

Ineffective Summary :

In this article, Mickey is talking about holidays. He says that celebrations like “parades, feasts, songs, and marches” have been replaced by vacations. Mickey says that vacations are a new idea created by bourgeois prosperity. This started happening after World War I, but even then people still attended parades carnivals, funerals, executions, and other communal events more than they do today, and a good deal less time checking into motels. He mentions that we don't even honor solemn holidays like Martin Luther King Day. All we care about is getting a three-day weekend.

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Clarion University of PA

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