How to Write a Summary of an article in your essay

What is a summary?

A summary condenses ideas and information into as few sentences as possible. A summary does not add your own thoughts.

When do you use a summary in your essays?

• You summarize your own ideas in your thesis sentence and topic sentences of each paragraph.
• You often summarize another writer’s work to show how it supports your argument, or when you want to argue against that author’s ideas.
• Summaries are especially useful because you can condense a lot of information into a short space.

How do you summarize?

In a summary, you want to identify the main idea of the article and put this information in your own words.Prepare to write a summary by underlining and writing notes as you read.The summary should include the thesis and topic sentences of the article put into your own words.One easy way to do this is to underline the topic sentence of each paragraph and then to write that sentence in your own words on the side of the page or on another piece of paper.Afterwards, you can read all those sentences together and then re-write them into complete sentences with good transition words.You may find you need to leave out some of the unimportant details too.Your summary should be as short and concise as possible.

Paragraphs:

• Find the topic sentence in each paragraph and underline.
• If no one sentence states the topic (or if the author is being ironic) then write a sentence which does in the margin.

Whole Essays:

• During your first reading, you want to get the main idea of the essay. To figure out the main idea, you should ask yourself why this essay was written and published. Clues to help determine this are: the title; the place it was published, which can help you determine the intended audience; the date of publication; the type of essay; the tone of the piece; and ideas which seem to be repeated throughout.
• During your second reading, look for the thesis sentence or write out a thesis sentence for the piece.
• Underline a topic sentence for each paragraph or write a sentence in the margins or on notebook paper for each paragraph.
• The thesis and topic sentences should be the basis for your summary but you will need to restate these sentences in your own words if you did not do so as you read.
• In addition, you want to make the summary as short and concise as possible. So you will condense sentences and leave out unimportant details and examples. Stick to the important points.
• Your summary should start with the author’s name and the title of the work.

Example: According to Mary Johnson in her essay, "Cats Make Good Pets, " the feline domestic companion is far superior to the canine one.

• When you refer to the author later, you always use the last name (Johnson comments...)
• Vary the verb you use when you talk about the author.

Here are some great verbs and phrases to use: says, comments, persuades, intimates, suggests, helps us understand, explains, elucidates, presents, argues, reminds us that, creates the impression that

A Worksheet to help you Write a Summary:

1. Start with an author tag which includes first and last name of the author and the title of the text (In “My Favorite Shoe” by John Jones explains... or John Jones in his article “My Favorite Shoe” explains....

2. What is this essay about? (thesis)

3. You may need to identify the issue is addressing. (subject)

4. What are the claim and sub claims? What are the main points the author makes?

5. What does the author want you to say/do/believe after reading this article?

Sample paragraph form

Xxxxx is the issue addressed in “xxxxx” by XXXXX. The thesis of this essay is XXXX. The author’s main claim is XXXXX and his/her subclaim is xxxxxx. The author says xxxxxx. His/her conclusion is xxxx.

For a Sample of my Summary of a longer article, see Harvard Study.