After a first reading, perhaps the best approach to a fairly difficult essay is to reread it and simultaneously take notes on a sheet of paper, summarizing each paragraph in a sentence or two. Writing a summary will help you to:

Don’t confuse a summary with a paraphrase. A paraphrase is a word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase rewording of a text, a sort of translation of the author’s language into your own. A paraphrase is therefore as long as the original or even longer; a summary is much shorter. An entire essay, even a whole book, may be summarized in a page, in a paragraph, even in a sentence. Obviously, the summary will leave out most details, but it will accurately state the essential thesis or claim of the original.

Why would anyone summarize, and why would anyone paraphrase? Because, as we’ve already said, these two activities — in different ways — offer a way to introduce other authors’ ideas into your arguments in a way that readers can follow. You may do this for a number of reasons. Summaries and paraphrases can accomplish the following:

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When you summarize, you’re standing back, saying briefly what the whole adds up to; you’re seeing the forest, as the saying goes, not the individual trees. When you paraphrase, you’re inching through the forest, scrutinizing each tree — finding a synonym for almost every word in the original in an effort to ensure you know exactly what the original is saying. (Caution: Do not incorporate a summary or a paraphrase into your own essay without acknowledging the source and stating that you are summarizing or paraphrasing.)

Let’s examine the distinction between summary and paraphrase in connection with the first two paragraphs of Paul Goodman’s essay “A Proposal to Abolish Grading,” excerpted from Goodman’s book Compulsory Miseducation and the Community of Scholars (1966).

Let half a dozen of the prestigious universities — Chicago, Stanford, the Ivy League — abolish grading, and use testing only and entirely for pedagogic purposes as teachers see fit.

Anyone who knows the frantic temper of the present schools will understand the transvaluation of values that would be effected by this modest innovation. For most of the students, the competitive grade has come to be the essence. The naive teacher points to the beauty of the subject and the ingenuity of the research; the shrewd student asks if he is responsible for that on the final exam.

A summary of these two paragraphs might read like this:

If some top universities used tests only to help students to learn and not for grades, students would stop worrying about whether they got an A, B or C and might begin to share the teacher’s interest in the beauty of the subject.

Notice that the summary doesn’t convey Goodman’s style or voice (e.g., the wry tone in his pointed contrast between “the naive teacher” and “the shrewd student”). That is not the purpose of summary.

Now for a paraphrase. Suppose you’re not sure what Goodman is getting at, maybe because you’re uncertain about the meanings of some words (e.g., pedagogic and transvaluation), or else you just want to make sure you understand the point. In such a case, you may want to move slowly through the sentences, restating them in your own words. You might turn Goodman’s “pedagogic purposes” into “goals in teaching,” “attempts to help students to learn,” or something else. Here is a paraphrase — not a summary, but a rewording — of Goodman’s paragraphs:

Suppose some of the top universities — such as Chicago, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and others in the Ivy League — stopped using grades and instead used tests only in order to help students to learn.

Everyone who is aware of the rat race in schools today will understand the enormous shift in values about learning that would come about by this small change. At present, idealistic instructors talk about how beautiful their subjects are, but smart students know that grades are what count. They only want to know if it will be on the exam.

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In short, you may decide to paraphrase an important text if you want the reader to see the passage itself but you know that the full passage will be puzzling. In this situation, you offer help, paraphrasing before making your own point about the author’s claim.

A second good reason to offer a paraphrase is if there is substantial disagreement about what the text says. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a good example of this sort of text:

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Exactly what, one might ask, is a “Militia”? What does it mean for a militia to be “well regulated”? And does “the people” mean each individual or the citizenry as a unified group? After all, elsewhere in the document, where the Constitution speaks of individuals, it speaks of a “man” or a “person,” not “the people.” To speak of “the people” is to use a term (some argue) that sounds like a reference to a unified group — perhaps the citizens of each of the thirteen states — rather than a reference to individuals. However, if Congress did mean a unified group rather than individuals, why didn’t it say, “Congress shall not prohibit the states from organizing militias”?

In fact, thousands of pages have been written about this sentence, and if you’re going to talk about it, you certainly have to let readers know exactly how you interpret each word. In short, you almost surely will paraphrase the sentence, going word by word, giving readers your own sense of what each word or phrase means. Here is one possible paraphrase:

Because an independent society needs the protection of an armed force if it is to remain free, the government may not limit the right of the individuals (who may someday form the militia needed to keep the society free) to possess weapons.

In this interpretation, the Constitution grants individuals the right to possess weapons, and that is that.

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Other students of the Constitution, however, offer very different paraphrases, usually along these lines:

Because each state that is now part of the United States may need to protect its freedom (from the new national government), the national government may not infringe on the right of each state to form its own disciplined militia.

This paraphrase says that the federal government may not prevent each state from having a militia; it says nothing about every individual person having a right to possess weapons.

The first paraphrase might be offered by the National Rifle Association or any other group that interprets the Constitution as guaranteeing individuals the right to own guns. The second paraphrase might be offered by groups that seek to limit the ownership of guns.

Why paraphrase? Here are two reasons why you might paraphrase a passage: