A Quick Guide on Writing Essays and Articles Summaries

Authors write essays to express ideas and thoughts that are mostly argumentative or narrative. They work hard on writing its paragraphs to provide you the best information. One of the most important abilities you must learn is writing summaries of essays.

Once you learn how to summarize essays, you can emphasize on the points you or the author have shared through the document. The conclusion serves as the ending point of the body, wherein the main idea with the supporting details are wrapped. It also helps readers on reading the text, especially with good comprehension and understanding.

Learning how to write summaries of essays can help you appreciate articles more. You need to work on writing text that summarize the author’s ideas, so you can help readers study about their essays. It also allows your readers understand the main idea better.

What is a Summary?

There is a conclusion at the end of an essay, but the definitions of an article and a summary are different. There is usually a short piece of writing that is concise and thorough.

In a much shorter way, when all the main points in a piece of writing are explained, a summary is complete.

Summary is the wrapping up of main ideas in a text. Stephen Wilhoit, in emphasized on this through his textbook “A Brief Guide to Writing from Readings.”

He suggests that keeping the qualities of a good summary in mind can help students avoid the pitfalls of unclear or disjointed conclusions.

It is a quick paraphrasing of all the main ideas in an essay. It contains the author’s thesis and supporting ideas. Also, it may use direct quotation of forceful or concise statements of the author.

However, it will not usually cite all of the author’s thoughts.

The Dos of Writing Summaries of Essays

A summary is more than just a quick recap of the entire text. It is the closest way to encapsulate the entire piece of writing into a few sentences.

The key to a good summary is critique, so keep your audiences in mind when writing your summaries.

Each summary you write should incorporate the following components:

• Author’s name
• The article’s title
• The main ideas
• Term definitions
• Introductory part
• Main Idea
• Supporting details
• The body
• The conclusion

These parts should be clearly delineated.

The Dont’s of Writing Essay Summaries

An essay summary is a means of concluding an essay and presenting it in a more easily digestible format. It is not necessary that you read the full essay to understand the summary.

The summary is meant to appear as a more concise representation of the content. A good summary of an essay showcases the main ideas, thoughts, concepts and overall structure.

Also, make sure that your summary contains the strategies and skills discussed in the specific essay.

Below are the dont’s of writing essay summaries.

• Include examples
• Illustrations
• Personal stories
• Opinions
• Using phrases like “this is all about.”

Conclusion

No matter whether you are the reading or the writing type, a summary of an essay has many benefits. Read an essay.

Then, write a summary of it. Learn more about the benefits of writing a summary by creating one yourself. All you need to do is follow everything you have learned from above.