A summary is a brief, concise restatement of the main points.  It should include the purpose, all essential specifics, and all major supporting points. It will answer the following questions: Who or what did something, why, when, where, and how.  It should also include the conclusions or results and recommendations or implications.  The summary should not include your opinion, irrelevant detail, examples or descriptions, jargon or slang.  It should be from 5% to 15% in length of the original article.

Follow the steps listed below when writing a summary:

1. Read the material to get an overall impression.

2. Re-read the material locating and underlining all main points

3. Collect your underlined material and organize the information into a rough draft.

4. Read the rough draft and condense, combine and/or delete information

5. Paraphrase and connect your ideas with conjunctive adverbs (also, because, consequently, however, etc.)

Here is a summary of an article from a magazine.

Title:  “Breaking the Divorce Cycle”

Author:  Barbara Kantrowitz

Source:  Newsweek, January 13, 1992, Vol. 119 Issue 2, p48, 6p

Summary:

            In “Breaking the Divorce Cycle” (Newsweek, January, 13, 1992), Barbara Kantrowitz reports on the first generation of children who have seen widespread divorce and who are now adults.  Still carrying wounds from their childhood traumas, they often have difficulties with their own love relationships.  Reports show that they are more likely than children of intact families to fear commitment and to have troubled relationships and broken marriages.  Social scientists aren’t sure whether these adjustment problems stem from the unhappy parental relationship before the divorce, the divorce experience itself, the economic decline following the divorce, or life in a single-parent family.  In addition, there seems to be no way to predict how well children of divorce will do as adults.  Some factors, however, have been identified as having a positive influence.  One is having had a parent with a strong positive attitude.  Another is having had parents who continued to communicate with each other about their children and to share parenting decisions.  For whatever reasons, some adult children of divorce have managed to overcome their childhood pain and somehow learn from their parents’ mistakes.  These are the adults who have ended up with the independence and maturity to build a strong marriage of their own.

MLA citation:

Kantrowitz, Barbara.  “Breaking the Divorce Cycle.”  Newsweek 119.2 (1992): 48-54.

 Please note that the summary includes information about the artcle: title, author, and source.  When writing your summary, include bibliographic information about the article and the main idea in the first sentence.

The article is available in Ebsco Host if you are interested in reading it.

SUMMARY TABLE

The summary table will help you visually organize your material.  After you have read the article and underlined the important information, write your responses to the questions on the table.  The answers will assist you in writing the summary.

Title: __________________________________________________

Author: ________________________________________________

Publisher: _______________________________________________

Date of Publication: ________________________________________

The summary in table format:

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