English 111: Comp./Rhet.
Springfield College in Illinois	
Instructor: Pete Ellertsen					

You've been writing summaries all your life. Right?

A summary, according to Roberta Alexander and Jan Lombardi of San Diego City College, is "a condensed version of a reading, much shorter than the original, that includes the main idea and the major supporting points" (184). Much of the writing you do for college papers will involve summarizing what other writers have said - in other words, reacting and responding to a text. But it's a more dynamic process than parroting back the main points like so many of us did in high school book reports. When you write an college-level paper, according to the authors of a particularly useful textbook titled Writers Inc., "you become an authority on your topic by borrowing, comparing, rejecting, or agreeing with your sources; and explaining your own thinking as you go" (Sebranek et al. 136). In other words, you're using your research to back up what you want to say. You're thinking for yourself, and that's what college is all about.

Sometimes you will be assigned a formal summary. It may also be called an abstract. Here's a quick-and-dirty, but effective, way to go about it:

1. Carefully read the material you are going to summarize, and make sure you understand it.
2. Determine the main idea or thesis. Scribble it down in a complete sentence on a scrap sheet of paper. Use your own words. Alexander and Lombardi define a main idea as "a general statement that covers all the important points the author makes about the topic" (110). Later you'll write a final draft of this main idea sentence in Step 5.
3. Decide which major supporting points to include in your summary. Usually this decision is easy -- you need to mention all the major points. According to Alexander and Lombardi, the major supporting points are "the chief ideas or facts that support the main idea" (173). A quick-and-dirty way to identify them: They'll almost always be generalizations.
4. Decide which supporting details you need to include. This step is usually pretty easy, too: Normally you don't need them. If it's a specific fact, figure or example, it's probably used to back up one of the supporting points.
5. Start writing! This is the main part of the assignment. Get the ideas down in your own words. Use complete sentences. Don't look back at the reading, or else you'll pick up its exact words when you don't want to. (This is not a good idea, because it puts the plagiarism police on your case.) Begin with the main idea -- or thesis sentence. Something like this: In his essay "Barhopping Around the World," British travel writer Reginald Lobscouse argues that the horseshoe sandwiches served on the north end of Springfield are a culinary art form unique to central Illinois. (Right: I'm making up this example. How did you guess?) Then go on to mention the major supporting points: Lobscouse says north-end bars in Springfield are famous for their horseshoes, but people from Chicago usually cannot be persuaded to eat them. He cites another important piece of evidence when he notes that horseshoes are served only in Springfield and nearby central Illinois towns like Mason City and Petersburg. You can, and should, comment briefly on the credibility of the source. Don't overdo the commentary, but make sure you add something of your own to the exercise. You don't want to sound like a parrot - or a high school book report. Make it your own. Use your common sense.
6. Use signal phrases. They signal the source of your information. An example is: "In his essay "Barhopping Around the World," British travel writer Reginald Lobscouse argues ..." Signal phrases can be shorter on second reference: "Lobscouse says ..." And you can use them to help analyze the reading you're summarizing: "He cites another important piece of evidence when he notes ..." Look at the signal phrases in my introduction to this tip sheet, and notice how they direct you to the book by Roberta Alexander and Jan Lombardi and Writers Inc. by Patrick Sebranek et al. in the Works Cited. That's what they're there for.
7. Go back over your summary and make sure you've got quotation marks around any passage of three words or more that are exactly like the original. You can stick in some direct quotations on purpose, though. Find quotes that sum up the main idea or key supporting points, or use especially vivid language: To illustrate his first major supporting point, Lobscouse tells about a 23-year-old Chicago woman who said, "That gut-bomb was as big and heavy as a bowling ball, and I gained 15 pounds overnight." (It would back up the general idea about people from Chicago who won't eat horseshoes.) You don't need a lot of detail, though. You want your summary to be shorter than the original.

More often, you won't be doing a formal abstract or summary. Instead, you'll be summarizing information to back up your points in a college paper. Purdue OWL has a good tip sheet on when to quote, when to paraphrase and when to summarize at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_quotprsum.html. (Purdue OWL has nothing to do with birds that go "hoot" in the night, by the way. It's an Online Writing Lab. Hence the acronym.) Read it. It's basic information.

Alexander, Roberta, and Jan Lombardi. A Community of Readers: A Thematic Approach to Reading. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004.

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing. 2004. Purdue University. 29 July
2004. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_quotprsum.html

Sebranek, Patrick, Verne Meyer and Dave Kemper. Writers Inc. Burlington, WI: Write Source Educational Publishing House, 1991.