A summary is a concise statement of the information, ideas, and arguments in a source. Including summaries in your notes can help you identify important arguments in the conversation you are about to join. You can write summaries to capture the overall argument and information in a source or to record a writer’s main idea so that you can respond to it later. The following notes contain appropriate and inappropriate summaries of the Sierra Club article, “Green Jobs for Veterans in Colorado.”

Appropriate Summary

Problems can arise when a writer fails to summarize ideas and instead either creates a close paraphrase or writes a patchwork summary that is little more than a series of passages copied from the source.

Inappropriate Summary

In your note, identify the author, the title, and, if you are summarizing only part of a source, the pages or paragraphs where the information can be found. To avoid mirroring the language and sentence structure of the source, begin your summary with “The author argues that” or “The author found that.” You might want to set aside the original source while you write your summary so that you won’t be tempted to copy sentences directly from it. After you’ve completed your summary, check it for accuracy and unintentional plagiarism.