How to Summarize
A practical guide to summarizing something written.
Step One: Read it. Read the target work. Read all of it. Do not skip words. Do not skip
“boring parts.”While you read it, keep a pencil in your hand and a piece of paper nearby. Jot impressions. If a paragraph makes no darn sense, then jot “Par 5... ?” or something similar. If you think the whole thing changes its “mind” at the end, then jot, “All a set up. Par. 27 says opposite.” If you think that the author is being sarcastic, jot that down. The jottings are for impressions.
Step Two: Pull the argument.
You know how those old “read and respond” essays always say, “What is the author's argument? Do you agree or disagree? Why?” Well, step two is to figure out the actual argument of the piece. Academic essays will tell you what the argument is in the form of a thesis statement, usually found at the end of the first paragraph or at the end of the last paragraph of the introduction. This is an academic convention that we all follow (you, too). However, non-academic essays can hide their arguments or present them in pieces. Satires and parodies can give an inverted argument. Ironic essays may misdirect the reader intentionally. Even academic arguments have a main argument and, often, a separate purpose. (Argument: Leibniz's Theodicy of 1710, which attributed the origin of evil to Adam and Eve's sin rather than God's creation, ended up making mankind guilty of the creation of evil and therefore, paradoxically, responsible for ending evil. Purpose: The author makes this argument because he believes that the social sciences, which have seemed to fail recently and multiply excuses for their inability to make people suffer less, were founded on an impossible effort at cleaning up evil itself.)You should be able to come up with, on your piece of paper, below your jottings, a single sentence that is the “argument” the author makes. Take your time and be sure that you have a good sentence.
Step Three: Find the sections.
If you are going to make an argument that really needs proving, then the argument needs to be presented in steps, and authors will present their own arguments in steps, too. Even the simplest essay has sections to it. Nothing except an text message is all introduction or all body. So, if you know the argument the author makes, you may want to figure out the sections of the argument – how the author put it together. Produce, for yourself, a quick sketch of the author's own grouping. (For the essay above, it might be like this: “Introduction jokes about experts. Theodicy in 1750 and how the argument split. Leibniz's work dominated the others by this point and won out over Bayles. By Voltaire, anthropology and psychology are addressing the improvement of mankind and replacing the old punishment models. Twentieth century and the very bad things that happened come just before major philosophers who demand refining method. By 1980's, no one is an expert, no one claims to be able to make anyone better. Conclusion starts here and goes into how the whole thing is a trial for the charge of evil and how it goes from priest to expert and how experts are now intolerable.”)
sort of plot of the argument, but that's not the same thing as a summary. The reason you do this is so you can map out what your own paragraphs are going to look like.
Step Four: Paragraphs
A full summary is going to be accurate, complete, concise, and objective. Each section/stage of the author's original will become a paragraph of your essay. Each paragraph of the author's original (this is not an iron-clad rule) will become a sentence of yours.
How?
4A: Mark out the start and finish of the author's section.
4B: Find the controlling idea or topic sentence of each paragraph. Find two or so of the supporting sentences that provide the best material in your opinion.
4B Illustrated: TARGET:
“Part of the escape into unindictability is the boom in individuality, which is encouraged by the development of the doctrine of “characterization” within the
philosophical anthropology of the second half of the eighteenth century, and reinforced by the genesis of the sense of history. Individuum est ineffabile (the individual is
ineffable); and for just this reason – because the demand for justification cannot reach the individual's ineffable individuality – human beings as individuals are inaccessible for questions of legitimation, which is precisely why they must become individuals.
From the middle of the eighteenth century on, the rapid rise of “individuals” is the rapid rise of their ineffability, as an answer to the hypertrophy of the legitimation-compulsion: as an escape into unindictability.” (Marquard, Odo. “Burdened and
Disemburdened Eighteenth Century Man and the Flight into Unindictability.” Farewell to Matters of Principle. 1990.)
[Yeah, I really read that. . . for fun.]
PROCESS: The guy has a controlling idea, but he develops it and modifies it as he goes. The main controlling idea is at the end (a funnel, or inductive, paragraph). So, the point is “From the middle of the eighteenth century there was an increasing emphasis on people as
individuals who could not be understood, questioned, or guessed at, due to their privacy, and this was a form of escaping guilt.”
The support that stands out to me is mixed, because all of the paragraph is densely written. That first sentence is pretty heavy, if you understand it, and there are heavy implications all over. I'd probably take, (first sentence) “individualism was encouraged by a philosophy of individual character,” (second sentence) “an individual can never be right or wrong, because the individual is unique,” and that's about it.
4C Turn each paragraph into a sentence in your own words by either using a compound sentence structure or a complex sentence structure.
PROCESS: I have two supporting bits, above, that will be added to my main idea.
Compound Sentence Complex Sentence
with a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS)
conditional clauses surrounding an independent clause. Example (keeping the
paragraph's own 'funnel' structure)
“Individualism was encouraged by a
philosophy of individual character, and an individual can never be right or wrong, because the individual is unique, so, from the middle of the eighteenth century, there was an increasing
emphasis on people as individuals who could not be understood, questioned, or guessed at, due to their privacy, and this was a form of escaping guilt.”
“As philosophy encouraged a belief in character and therefore the individual [adverbial phrase], there was an increasing
emphasis on humans as individuals who might not be understood or
questioned, due to their privacy, which takes the form of an 'ineffable'
quality that cannot be right or wrong [subordinate clause], and this was a form of escaping the indictment and guilt.”
Now, you might think my example sentence is a whopper, but compare it to the paragraph, and you'll see that it is shorter and clearer.
STEP FIVE: WRITE YOUR OWN COMMENT ON WHAT THE
AUTHOR IS DOING FOR EACH SECTION.
You, in your voice, tell yourself what the author is doing in each section of the argument. Do not repeat the argument here and now. Just write, for yourself, what the author is trying to do. I might write, “Marquard needs to establish the exact development of the private individual from the natural or social man” to cover the paragraphs around the one I quoted above. (He is arguing, in fact, about how philosophers stopped dealing with human beings as if we were predictable and began to see us as each unique. It did not happen in a day, and it's not “obvious.”)
This comment becomes the topic sentence for YOUR PARAGRAPH in the summary.
STEP SIX: COMBINE ALL THE PARAGRAPHS OF A SECTION, AND
CONTROL THEM WITH YOUR TOPIC SENTENCE
.
You have a sentence for each paragraph, right? You know where each section of the author's argument begins and ends, don't you? You have your own comment, in your own voice, about what the author is doing in each section. So, put your comment about what the section does as the topic sentence for a summary paragraph and add in the summary sentences of the
paragraphs in the section.
The
last thing for you to write
is your introduction.
An academic paper is not a roll of paper towels: you do not begin at the top and just keep scrolling to the end. Instead, it is something that needs shape and organization, and that organization will keep your argument effective.
If you have followed this guide, you have jottings you made when you read the work first. Look back at them. What general impressions do you get from the work? What purpose did the author really have? What tone did the author strike? How convincing or informative was the author? (Leave out how “interesting/boring” the author was. That quality testifies more about you than the work.) Assume that whatever you conclude there is intentional and ask yourself what the advantages are to the author.
Now, what is the main point to the argument? Combine YOUR main view with the author's and you'll be near a thesis for your summary.
Example: Marquard may be arguing about the desire to avoid blame for evil accounting for the social sciences and the failure of “experts” today, and I may regard the insights as brilliant, the tone interesting, but the method difficult. My impressions are that it's great stuff, but it's really, really hard to read. So, if I combine the two, I might come up with, “Odo Marquard's essay explains the reason for the social sciences themselves and the way that philosophy has sought to defer questions of evil and blame by excusing evil over and over again, which is invaluable, although done in such detail and with such opaque language as to lose much of its utility.” That acts like a thesis for my own summary.
Note that your summary will refer to the original and not repeat it. In other words, my summary will be saying, nearly every other sentence, “Marquard says” rather than simply repeating the material. I want to refer to the author, not repeat the author.
To get to your thesis statement, you want to address the subject that the essay does. Then address the essayist. Then mention the quality of the essay. Then go to the thesis statement. EXAMPLE
1. “Since the advent of the atomic bomb, the world has dwelt in fear of its own
irrationality.” 2. “Erich Fromm discusses the perils of the atomic age in the context of the other crisis of the mid-20th century, the holocaust, in his 'Disobedience as a Moral
and Psychological Problem.” 3. “Fromm's essay provokes emotional and intellectual responses and tries to posit disobedience as a virtue, obedience as a vice if not qualified.” 4. “'Disobedience as a Moral and Psychological Problem' argues that disobedience has social and individual value and that its primary problem is for institutions of power, while obedience can be a virtue, so long as it is accomplished through a conscious act of will rather than coerced by power.”
CONCLUSION IN
Please do not write “in conclusion.” I can tell it's the conclusion, because the ink stops.
Also, do not repeat your introduction in the conclusion. “Repeat” is no part of the conclusion. Instead, think of a conclusion as a place to draw conclusions from what you have
