Chapter
26. SUMMARY
Introduction
Basics
Advanced
Samples
Activities
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Advanced Methods of
Summarizing ---
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Introduction
These advanced ideas and/or applications can help
you understand and use this paper's type of thinking better. For
additional information, check the chapter's
Grammar Book
Links
in the right column.
Difficulty of Summarizing Non-Reading Persons,
Places, and Events Well
This chapter has primarily discussed how to write
summaries of readings. However, what does one do when there is a summary
to make of an event, person, or place? What kind of system should be used?
Much of the answer depends on the context: who is the summary for (who is
your audience), and what kind of situation or need is involved? For
example, a summary of business event or of a professional meeting is simply a
set of minutes. In minutes, the audience and purpose require that you
write down enough of what happened that people who did not attend--or who later
need to refer to the minutes as a reminder--can find a sufficiently accurate
account of what was said and who did what.
Another kind of summary is an "observation." Observations are
required in many professional situations: e.g., science (a lab report),
psychology (a psychological summary of interaction or of an individual's
profile), or medicine (a physical summary of a patient's medical
condition). Each type of summary has its own set of standards or
rubrics.
In this sense, a non-reading summary and what this Web site calls an "analysis"
come very close to each other. The difference, when there is one, is
simply this: a summary attempts to reflect as accurately and fully as possible
(more like minutes do) what happens or what a person or object is like, whereas
an analysis chooses only certain elements to use in examining the event, person,
or object. The dirence is subtle but real. If, for example, you were
asked to summarize the interaction of a small group of people, you would take a
form of minutes as accurately as possible. If, however, you were asked to
apply certain psychological principles of group dynamics to your observation of
a small group of people (with questions asking how many interactions are there
per minute by each person, would these interactions be characterized as pleasant
or unpleasant, etc.), then you are being asked to look only for certain
things. This is different from taking minutes.
The irony in this difference between summary and
analysis, however, is that sometimes the analysis is what helps us see detail
better. For this reason, in non-reading summaries, using some kind of
specific analytical system may help you see more detail in whatever you
summarize. Of course, once you have learned to apply this (and perhaps
other) analytical systems to a person, place, or event, you then have more tools
with which to create a truer, fuller, and thus more accurate summary of set of
"minutes" of whatever you are observing.
So, this chapter now has come full circle. The
introduction claimed that a summary really is a somewhat sophisticated and
complex type of paper to write well. This section now claims that you may
need to learn better methods of analytical observation before you are capable of
truly and accurately summarizing something that is not a text. You'll find
this true in most professions and in much of professional life, too: one cannot
state what is going on with complete accuracy until one learns the tools with
which to fully observe.
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Writing An Abstract
An abstract usually is a summary of a paper you, yourself, have written.
It is not uncommon to see an abstract written at the beginning of a longer
research paper, and especially in the scientific and business professions, a
summary of this type is used to inform its readers of the contents of the paper
so that readers do not have to read the entire paper themselves. The
purpose of this is to help those who want a quick understanding of the contents
of the paper: they may want to know no more, or they may prefer an abstract to
help them decide whether to read the entire paper. An
abstract most often is just one paragraph, but sometimes is it is several.
Most often, the introduction and conclusion consist of just one or two sentences
tacked on to the beginning of the first paragraph and the end of the
last. Otherwise, the methods and skills needed in writing an abstract are
much the same as in a standard summary. In fact, if you have used good
topic sentences at the beginnings of your body sections--and good paragraph
topic sentences at the beginnings of your longer paragraphs--these can be
copied, word for word, to form the first draft of your abstract. For
example, if you have only four main body sections, you may only need four
sentences for your abstract, plus an opening and closing sentence, for a total
of six. The lengths of abstracts vary from field to field, so you should
ask your instructor or workplace coordinator. Looking at samples
from your field may help, too.
See
also "Abstract" in "12. Types of Papers"
of
OnlineGrammar.org.
Writing a Summary in a
Critical Review or Literary Review
Critical and literary reviews usually are evaluative reviews of books (and
sometimes of plays or movies). Critical reviews usually are of academic or
other expository or nonliterary, nonfiction books. Literary reviews are of
literature. In both, the work being reviewed must first be
summarized. Some reviewers like to mix their summarizing with their
evaluations. However, many start with a summary section. For more
about these, see the chapters on "Writing
a Critical Review" and "Writing a
Literary Review."
Writing an "Executive Summary":
An "executive summary" is a quick, efficient summary
of the main elements of a business or professional paper. It is placed
either at the very beginning of the paper or after a brief introduction.
It often can be simply composed using the topic sentence of each main body
section, or of each main paragraph throughout the paper. It's purpose is
to save an executive the time of reading the entire document: this assumes that
you have written the summary well enough that the most important points are
clear, along with a clear initial premise or problem, and a clear conclusion or
resolution. Do not let an executive summary become too long. If the
reader wants to see more, he or she can look at parts of the paper itself.
Writing "Minutes"
or an "Observation"--See
"Other Processes," above.
Writing a Thesis Synopsis--See "Thesis
Synopsis" in the "Advanced" Section of the "Thesis" chapter.
Writing a Précis--See
"Précis" in the "Organizing" section's "Types of Papers."
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The Modes in Summary Writing
If you are working with the rhetorical modes, a summary may use several of
them. Each of
these modes has
been defined and explained in the "Starting" section's "Rhetorical
Modes" chapter. In a summary, you need to determine for
yourself which modes are being used in the text (or person,
place, or event) that you are summarizing; then you should try to reflect the the use of these modes in your
summary, whether you do so obviously or subtly.
For example, let us say that you are trying to
summarize the following paper or speech. What is the primary type of rhetorical
mode that it uses?
Deceptive Political Labels
by R. Jewell
In the political process, we may find branding some people as conservatives
and some as liberals an easy way of distinguishing sides. However, these
labels can be deceiving.
Often the political positions of a Republican and a Democrat may be very
similar, even though traditionally Republicans are considered conservatives
and Democrats liberals. A person who considered himself or herself a moderate
might join the Republican Party in one state or region, but in another state
join the Democrats. In Congress, in fact, one can find Republicans who are
more Liberal than Democrats, and some of our best Presidential candidates have
not always known, when first considering running for the highest office, with
which political party they would run.
Some critics suggest that the current labels of liberal and conservative do
not adequately convey how our elected representatives vote. Rather, say these
critics, we can describe politicians by whether they are followers of the
status quo or are individualistic. Those who follow the status quo might be labeled
as moderates. True individuals, whether they lean right or left
politically, follow their conscience or blaze new trails.
In addition, some of the activities thought to be conservative or liberal are
inaccurately associated with these two groups. Taxation, for example, however
much Republicans campaign against it, tends to be as much or more a Republican
activity than a Democratic one. Saving our farms and protecting the U.S.
farmer seems to be an activity pursued more by so-called "urbanized"
liberal Democrats.
As we can see, we must be careful with labels. This is especially true when
using the labels "conservative" and "liberal."
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The primary rhetorical mode happens in this case to
be argument--the making of an opinion or point. But what kind of pattern is
used? Is it a debate between two opposing views? Is it a pros-and-cons
discussion about differing ways of doing something? Or does it have one main
point and then several supporting reasons? When you make your summary, you
should use the same parts. In this case, the piece is an argument with a main
point and three supporting reasons. Each of these must appear--in briefer
form--in a summary of the piece:
The thesis of "Deceptive Political Labels" by R. Jewell is that the labels
conservative and liberal can
deceive. Jewell provides three reasons. First, Republicans and Democrats sometimes have nearly identical beliefs,
though traditionally one is considered conservative and the other
liberal. Second, a more accurate set of labels for politicians might be "status quo
follower" and "individualist." (3.) Third, historically some important
conservative issues have been fought by Democrats, and vice versa. Jewell
concludes that clearly, the conservative and liberal labels are not always accurately used.
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This principle--finding the basic rhetorical
structure of an essay and using it to help summarize it--can be applied to any
text. The more accurately one knows the rhetorical modes, the more easily
they can be recognized as permeating all texts, from the overall structure to
short passages and even sentences within them.
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