It should be noted that two basic subtypes of summary writing are distinguished: a summary essay and a reader summary. A summary essay is devoted to overviewing an original book or text and is usually written for other people. A reader summary is composed to develop a clear understanding of the book or text that you have read.
Summary Writing Tips
The key goal of summary writing is to convey or present your understanding of the chosen book or text to the reader, without having him/her read it. Nowadays the majority of professors or teachers prefer to give their students such a written assignment as a summary, our company and our writers have prepared some tips to help in writing an excellent summary.
How to write a summary: Useful and Helpful Tips
- Thoroughly and carefully read and then study the original book or text. After you have read it, you should try to write down some notes on the author’s tone, style, and mood, as well as to identify the main ideas or points expressed.
- Divide the chosen text into several sections, and then prepare a brief outline. Breaking the text into several parts, helps make the material very easy to understand. Then you should read every part once more, but this very time, you should highlight only the key ideas and points. You should mark those areas that you are going to refer to in your summary, and those that you are not going to include into your essay.
- When you get a clear understanding of the information, you should write down the key idea or point in every section in the form of a brief overview.
- You should start writing a summary with the introduction. The goal is to present the key ideas in the source text. The introduction should comprise such pieces as the name and surname of the writer, the title of the text or book, as well as some background (if necessary).
- In the body paragraphs, you should state the considerations or ideas that you have chosen while reading the book or text. You should try to expand on each of them by providing one or more piece of evidence from the original book or text.
- After having summarized the key ideas in the original text, your summary writing is over. The conclusion paragraph can be included, if necessary.
How to write a good summary: Points for Consideration
- Your summary essay should have a close connection to the source.
- The following paper should serve as a close substitute for the original book or text. While reading your essay, the readers ought to be able to develop a clear understanding of the original book or text.
The key goal of such an essay is to summarize the original book or text and not to criticize it.
