Writing a summary might be a challenge that everyone needs to face from early school age. However, it causes problems not only for the students or adults but also experienced bloggers and copywriters. How to write a high-quality book or article summary? And which mistakes should be avoided?
What is a summary?
Before revealing the tips about writing a summary, it is worth explaining what a summary is. It is a brief digest of a text, for example, a book, interesting article, or thesis – in the way that presents all the most important strands. The crucial thing is that the summary cannot be too extensive. A source text is a starting point that needs to be well introduced. Without that, it is impossible to create a good summary. During the writing process, you need to convey the sense of a text read. It is a reflection of the author’s thoughts, without any personal feelings or ideas.
What should a summary contain?
Many people wonder: does a summary have a title and paragraphs? Should headings and a proper structure also be included as it is in the SEO texts (which we have already mentioned)? The summary contains all the important strands of a book or article that you read. It presents the main characters, the place of action, climax, and possibly moralism. To not forget about anything, it is also worth making notes of the most important things during the reading of the source text.
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The issue of a summary title can be quite difficult. While writing an exam, students usually omit it, or they write “Summary of the book/ article called (…)” at the beginning of their work. It is similar to the case of creating a thesis abstract. If you create a blog entry, it is worth informing your readers about its content. The headings of a summary are not necessary, however, the paragraph division is. Due to that, the text is readable, clear, and easier to search for needed information.
How to write a high-quality article or book summary?
The first thing you need to do to write a good summary of a book, thesis, or article is to familiarize yourself with the source text. Sometimes it needs to be done several times to make sure that you understood everything. The choice of the most important events or thoughts is also necessary because you will be focusing on them later. You also need to verify if the given facts are the major ones. You need to be objective. The main thesis of the author’s text needs to be presented in your own words. You also need to remember to use short, simple sentences.
Features of a promising summary:
- crispness,
- brevity,
- substantive content,
- objectiveness,
- simple language.
A summary needs to be short but substantive at the same time. It should contain all the necessary pieces of information. You need to avoid expressing your own opinion while writing it. It is the author’s ideas and thinking process that matter because it is their text that is presented to others. Moreover, everyone who reads our summary, cannot have any problems with understanding it.
What should be avoided during summary writing? It should not include:
- digressions and your comments,
- fragments copied from the source text,
- quotes,
- cited dialogs.
A summary and copywriting
A good copywriter can write a factual technical article, an interesting blog entry, as well as a substantive summary. Everyone faces this form of text in everyday life, for example when going through web search engine results. On the website, the web addresses appear as meta descriptions. It is a description that is a summary of what is available on each website. It is short and contains the keywords – it is approximately 155 characters with spaces.
As you can see, we see summaries in everyday life, and we often do not realize it. The writing process itself is usually not the easiest thing to do. If you have any problems, contact us. We will help you.
PS. We work on content writing, including summaries, not only at work but also during our off-hours. Ewelina’s blog, in which she reviews books, presents news, and encourages reading, is the proof. Are you wondering which book you should choose for long evenings? Take a look here.
