4c. Summarizing to deepen your understanding

4cSummarize to deepen your understanding.

MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR HANDBOOK

Knowing how to summarize a source is a key research skill.

image Using summaries in researched writing: 51c

Your goal in summarizing a text is to state the work’s main ideas and key points simply, objectively, and accurately in your own words. Writing a summary does not require you to judge the author’s ideas; it requires you to understand the author’s ideas. Whereas in an outline you x-ray a text to see its major parts, in a summary you flesh out the parts to demonstrate your understanding of what they say. In summarizing, you condense information, put an author’s ideas in your own words, and test your understanding of what a text says. If you have sketched a brief outline of the text (see 4b), refer to it as you draft your summary.

Following is Emilia Sanchez’s summary of the article "Big Box Stores Are Bad for Main Street."

In her essay “Big Box Stores Are Bad for Main Street,” Betsy Taylor argues that chain stores harm communities by taking the life out of downtown shopping districts. Explaining that a community’s “soul” is more important than low prices or consumer convenience, she argues that small businesses are better than stores like Home Depot and Target because they emphasize personal interactions and don’t place demands on a community’s resources. Taylor asserts that big-box stores are successful because “we’ve become a nation of hyper-consumers” (1011), although the convenience of shopping in these stores comes at the expense of benefits to the community. She concludes by suggesting that it’s not “anti-American” to oppose big-box stores because the damage they inflict on downtown shopping districts extends to America itself.

—Emilia Sanchez, student

Guidelines for writing a summary

  • In the first sentence, mention the title of the text, the name of the author, and the author’s thesis.
  • Maintain a neutral tone; be objective.
  • As you present the author’s ideas, use the third-person point of view and the present tense: Taylor argues. . . . (If you are writing in APA style, see 60b.)
  • Keep your focus on the text. Don’t state the author’s ideas as if they were your own.
  • Put all or most of your summary in your own words; if you borrow a phrase or a sentence from the text, put it in quotation marks and give the page number in parentheses.
  • Limit yourself to presenting the text’s key points.
  • Be concise; make every word count.