What is summarising?
When producing assessments, supporting evidence and information from other sources needs to be incorporated through paraphrasing, summarising, or quoting, and this information must be referenced.
Every day we summarise without thinking about it, such as when telling a friend what happened in a movie or telling a student what they missed in a tutorial. In academic writing, summarising is telling the reader the most important information from a source in your own words. This is different from paraphrasing: where paraphrasing is expressing specific pieces of information from a source in our own words, summarising is conveying an author’s overall argument or large sections of their work, such as a whole page or chapter. As a result, a summary is generally much shorter than the original text.
What is included in a summary depends on the type of text being summarised and the purpose for this information in your assessment. For example:
- An author’s argument might be summarised into a thesis statement and a few key points, leaving out all the explanation and detailed evidence.
- A research report would be summarised into the motivating problem or driving question, the type of method and the findings of greatest significance, leaving out all the descriptive and explanatory details and raw data (exactly what an abstract does for a journal article).
- A case in law would be summarized into the facts of the case, the decision, the ratio and any significant obiter, including noting dissenting judgements.
If you’re not sure of the best way to summarise a type of text that you come across regularly in a subject, speak to a Learning Skills Advisor.
Tip: The introduction to every academic source should provide the reader with a summarising preview of what is to come.
Why summarise?
Writing a summary is useful because in the act of identifying what is important, you are analysing and evaluating information, and forming memories of what you have read or heard – which is half the job of studying for an exam. Having an accurate and short record of what you’ve read or heard is also a useful source of ‘digested’ information for use when you need to generate a new text that involves re-presenting others’ ideas.
Summarising is especially valuable for assessments like Annotated bibliographies and Literature reviews, which involve summarising themes and features of other sources.
How do I summarise?
Follow the steps below to effectively summarise sources in your academic writing.
- Read and understand your sources. Take notes in your own words about key points and findings. For strategies and approaches, see Note-taking.
- Identify the most important information to convey in the context of your assessment purpose or question.
- Write these points in dot point form.
- Elaborate these points into sentence or paragraph form.
- Compare to the original text to ensure the meaning has been accurately captured.
- Reference the source, because even though it is expressed in your words, the information originated elsewhere.