The ability to summarize is important in a variety of fields. From breaking down a research report to simply trying to get the main points of a presentation across, summarizing is often vitally important to writers.
In professional writing, the ability to summarize and clarify information is an important skill. Often, writers need to read and break down complicated reports to present to those who may not be skilled in a field. For example, it may be necessary to explain the results of a research study to someone who neither has the time or the ability to read over the report themselves. What do you do?
Summarize, of course!
Summarizing sounds easy, but can often be difficult. It can be hard to pick out which segments of a report are important (aren’t they all important!?) and making sure that the information of the report is accessible to people of many different backgrounds can be quite a task. There are, however, a few simple ways to make summarizing simple and painless.
Take Notes
Read over the piece you want to summarize first. Think about it. What was the point of the paper? What information was most important to getting that point across?
Read the paper again. This time, take notes on what pieces of information are most important. What information is most important for people to know? If you are summarizing a research paper, the research performed and the results of the study are likely most important.
You notes should be to-the-point and as simple as possible. Don’t get bogged down in lots of details- in a summary, the basic gist is fine.
Know Your Audience
Summaries are usually presented to a very general audience. Keep in mind that the people you’re giving the summary to may not know as much about the subject as you do. You language should reflect this! Don’t go overboard with technical terms. If you need to use technical language, it may be beneficial to have a definition for some of the terms.
Knowing your audience also allows you to tailor your summary to them. If you know your audience is particularly interested in the results of a study, not the procedures, you may want to focus more on the results in your summary.
Keep your audience in mind as you write. It will make it easier for you to know which details to keep and which ones to leave.
Mind the Length
A good summary should be about one fifth the length of the original paper. That means that if you’re summarizing a five page paper, your summary should be about a page in length. If it’s a lot longer, you haven’t summarized enough. If it’s shorter, you may be cutting out a little too much information.
Keep an eye on the length as you write. It doesn’t need to match the one fifth rule exactly, but it’s a good rule of thumb. If you notice it’s getting too long, try reading over and cutting out extraneous details. If it’s too short, take another look at the original article for some areas that could use some more explanation.
Follow these tips and you’ll be an expert on summaries in no time at all.
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