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Summary: Using it Wisely

What this handout is about.

Knowing how to summarize something you have read, seen, or heard is a valuable skill, one you have probably used in many writing assignments. It is important, though, to recognize when you must go beyond describing, explaining, and restating texts and offer a more complex analysis. This handout will help you distinguish between summary and analysis and avoid inappropriate summary in your academic writing.

Is summary a bad thing?

Not necessarily. But it’s important that your keep your assignment and your audience in mind as you write. If your assignment requires an argument with a thesis statement and supporting evidence—as many academic writing assignments do—then you should limit the amount of summary in your paper. You might use summary to provide background, set the stage, or illustrate supporting evidence, but keep it very brief: a few sentences should do the trick. Most of your paper should focus on your argument. (Our handout on argument will help you construct a good one.)

Writing a summary of what you know about your topic before you start drafting your actual paper can sometimes be helpful. If you are unfamiliar with the material you’re analyzing, you may need to summarize what you’ve read in order to understand your reading and get your thoughts in order. Once you figure out what you know about a subject, it’s easier to decide what you want to argue.

You may also want to try some other pre-writing activities that can help you develop your own analysis. Outlining, freewriting, and mapping make it easier to get your thoughts on the page. (Check out our handout on brainstorming for some suggested techniques.)

Why is it so tempting to stick with summary and skip analysis?

Many writers rely too heavily on summary because it is what they can most easily write. If you’re stalled by a difficult writing prompt, summarizing the plot of The Great Gatsby may be more appealing than staring at the computer for three hours and wondering what to say about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s use of color symbolism. After all, the plot is usually the easiest part of a work to understand. Something similar can happen even when what you are writing about has no plot: if you don’t really understand an author’s argument, it might seem easiest to just repeat what he or she said.

To write a more analytical paper, you may need to review the text or film you are writing about, with a focus on the elements that are relevant to your thesis. If possible, carefully consider your writing assignment before reading, viewing, or listening to the material about which you’ll be writing so that your encounter with the material will be more purposeful. (We offer a handout on reading towards writing .)

How do I know if I’m summarizing?

As you read through your essay, ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I stating something that would be obvious to a reader or viewer?
• Does my essay move through the plot, history, or author’s argument in chronological order, or in the exact same order the author used?
• Am I simply describing what happens, where it happens, or whom it happens to?

A “yes” to any of these questions may be a sign that you are summarizing. If you answer yes to the questions below, though, it is a sign that your paper may have more analysis (which is usually a good thing):

• Am I making an original argument about the text?
• Have I arranged my evidence around my own points, rather than just following the author’s or plot’s order?
• Am I explaining why or how an aspect of the text is significant?

Certain phrases are warning signs of summary. Keep an eye out for these:

• “[This essay] is about…”
• “[This book] is the story of…”
• “[This author] writes about…”
• “[This movie] is set in…”

Here’s an example of an introductory paragraph containing unnecessary summary. Sentences that summarize are in italics:

The Great Gatsby is the story of a mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby, who lives alone on an island in New York. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the book, but the narrator is Nick Carraway. Nick is Gatsby’s neighbor, and he chronicles the story of Gatsby and his circle of friends, beginning with his introduction to the strange man and ending with Gatsby’s tragic death. In the story, Nick describes his environment through various colors, including green, white, and grey. Whereas white and grey symbolize false purity and decay respectively, the color green offers a symbol of hope.

Here’s how you might change the paragraph to make it a more effective introduction:

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald provides readers with detailed descriptions of the area surrounding East Egg, New York. In fact, Nick Carraway’s narration describes the setting with as much detail as the characters in the book. Nick’s description of the colors in his environment presents the book’s themes, symbolizing significant aspects of the post-World War I era. Whereas white and grey symbolize the false purity and decay of the 1920s, the color green offers a symbol of hope.

This version of the paragraph mentions the book’s title, author, setting, and narrator so that the reader is reminded of the text. And that sounds a lot like summary—but the paragraph quickly moves on to the writer’s own main topic: the setting and its relationship to the main themes of the book. The paragraph then closes with the writer’s specific thesis about the symbolism of white, grey, and green.

How do I write more analytically?

Analysis requires breaking something—like a story, poem, play, theory, or argument—into parts so you can understand how those parts work together to make the whole. Ideally, you should begin to analyze a work as you read or view it instead of waiting until after you’re done—it may help you to jot down some notes as you read. Your notes can be about major themes or ideas you notice, as well as anything that intrigues, puzzles, excites, or irritates you. Remember, analytic writing goes beyond the obvious to discuss questions of how and why—so ask yourself those questions as you read.

The St. Martin’s Handbook (the bulleted material below is quoted from p. 38 of the fifth edition) encourages readers to take the following steps in order to analyze a text:

• Identify evidence that supports or illustrates the main point or theme as well as anything that seems to contradict it.
• Consider the relationship between the words and the visuals in the work. Are they well integrated, or are they sometimes at odds with one another? What functions do the visuals serve? To capture attention? To provide more detailed information or illustration? To appeal to readers’ emotions?
• Decide whether the sources used are trustworthy.
• Identify the work’s underlying assumptions about the subject, as well as any biases it reveals.

Once you have written a draft, some questions you might want to ask yourself about your writing are “What’s my point?” or “What am I arguing in this paper?” If you can’t answer these questions, then you haven’t gone beyond summarizing. You may also want to think about how much of your writing comes from your own ideas or arguments. If you’re only reporting someone else’s ideas, you probably aren’t offering an analysis.

What strategies can help me avoid excessive summary?

• Read the assignment (the prompt) as soon as you get it. Make sure to reread it before you start writing. Go back to your assignment often while you write. (Check out our handout on reading assignments ).
• Formulate an argument (including a good thesis) and be sure that your final draft is structured around it, including aspects of the plot, story, history, background, etc. only as evidence for your argument. (You can refer to our handout on constructing thesis statements ).
• Read critically—imagine having a dialogue with the work you are discussing. What parts do you agree with? What parts do you disagree with? What questions do you have about the work? Does it remind you of other works you’ve seen?
• Make sure you have clear topic sentences that make arguments in support of your thesis statement. (Read our handout on paragraph development if you want to work on writing strong paragraphs).
• Use two different highlighters to mark your paper. With one color, highlight areas of summary or description. With the other, highlight areas of analysis. For many college papers, it’s a good idea to have lots of analysis and minimal summary/description.
• Ask yourself: What part of the essay would be obvious to a reader/viewer of the work being discussed? What parts (words, sentences, paragraphs) of the essay could be deleted without loss? In most cases, your paper should focus on points that are essential and that will be interesting to people who have already read or seen the work you are writing about.

But I’m writing a review! Don’t I have to summarize?

That depends. If you’re writing a critique of a piece of literature, a film, or a dramatic performance, you don’t necessarily need to give away much of the plot. The point is to let readers decide whether they want to enjoy it for themselves. If you do summarize, keep your summary brief and to the point.

Instead of telling your readers that the play, book, or film was “boring,” “interesting,” or “really good,” tell them specifically what parts of the work you’re talking about. It’s also important that you go beyond adjectives and explain how the work achieved its effect (how was it interesting?) and why you think the author/director wanted the audience to react a certain way. (We have a special handout on writing reviews that offers more tips.)

If you’re writing a review of an academic book or article, it may be important for you to summarize the main ideas and give an overview of the organization so your readers can decide whether it is relevant to their specific research interests.

If you are unsure how much (if any) summary a particular assignment requires, ask your instructor for guidance.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Barnet, Sylvan. 2015. A Short Guide to Writing about Art , 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Corrigan, Timothy. 2014. A Short Guide to Writing About Film , 9th ed. New York: Pearson.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Zinsser, William. 2001. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction , 6th ed. New York: Quill.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to Write a Summary (Examples Included)

Ashley Shaw

Have you ever recommended a book to someone and given them a quick overview? Then you’ve created a summary before!

Summarizing is a common part of everyday communication. It feels easy when you’re recounting what happened on your favorite show, but what do you do when the information gets a little more complex?

Written summaries come with their own set of challenges. You might ask yourself:

• What details are unnecessary?
• How do you put this in your own words without changing the meaning?
• How close can you get to the original without plagiarizing it?
• How long should it be?

The answers to these questions depend on the type of summary you are doing and why you are doing it.

A summary in an academic setting is different to a professional summary—and both of those are very different to summarizing a funny story you want to tell your friends.

One thing they all have in common is that you need to relay information in the clearest way possible to help your reader understand. We’ll look at some different forms of summary, and give you some tips on each.

Let’s get started!

What Is a Summary?

How do you write a summary, how do you write an academic summary, what are the four types of academic summaries, how do i write a professional summary, writing or telling a summary in personal situations, summarizing summaries.

A summary is a shorter version of a larger work. Summaries are used at some level in almost every writing task, from formal documents to personal messages.

When you write a summary, you have an audience that doesn’t know every single thing you know.

When you want them to understand your argument, topic, or stance, you may need to explain some things to catch them up.

Instead of having them read the article or hear every single detail of the story or event, you instead give them a brief overview of what they need to know.

Academic, professional, and personal summaries each require you to consider different things, but there are some key rules they all have in common.

Let’s go over a few general guides to writing a summary first.

1. A summary should always be shorter than the original work, usually considerably.

Even if your summary is the length of a full paper, you are likely summarizing a book or other significantly longer work.

2. A summary should tell the reader the highlights of what they need to know without giving them unnecessary details.

3. It should also include enough details to give a clear and honest picture.

For example, if you summarize an article that says “ The Office is the greatest television show of all time,” but don’t mention that they are specifically referring to sitcoms, then you changed the meaning of the article. That’s a problem! Similarly, if you write a summary of your job history and say you volunteered at a hospital for the last three years, but you don’t add that you only went twice in that time, it becomes a little dishonest.

4. Summaries shouldn’t contain personal opinion.

While in the longer work you are creating you might use opinion, within the summary itself, you should avoid all personal opinion. A summary is different than a review. In this moment, you aren’t saying what you think of the work you are summarizing, you are just giving your audience enough information to know what the work says or did.

Now that we have a good idea of what summaries are in general, let’s talk about some specific types of summary you will likely have to do at some point in your writing life.

An academic summary is one you will create for a class or in other academic writing. The exact elements you will need to include depend on the assignment itself.

However, when you’re asked for an academic summary, this usually this means one of five things, all of which are pretty similar:

• You need to do a presentation in which you talk about an article, book, or report.
• You write a summary paper in which the entire paper is a summary of a specific work.
• You summarize a class discussion, lesson, or reading in the form of personal notes or a discussion board post.
• You do something like an annotated bibliography where you write short summaries of multiple works in preparation of a longer assignment.
• You write quick summaries within the body of another assignment . For example, in an argumentative essay, you will likely need to have short summaries of the sources you use to explain their argument before getting into how the source helps you prove your point.

Regardless of what type of summary you are doing, though, there are a few steps you should always follow:

• Skim the work you are summarizing before you read it. Notice what stands out to you.
• Next, read it in depth . Do the same things stand out?
• Put the full text away and write in a few sentences what the main idea or point was.
• Go back and compare to make sure you didn’t forget anything.
• Expand on this to write and then edit your summary.

Each type of academic summary requires slightly different things. Let’s get down to details.

How Do I Write a Summary Paper?

Sometimes teachers assign something called a summary paper . In this, the entire thing is a summary of one article, book, story, or report.

To understand how to write this paper, let’s talk a little bit about the purpose of such an assignment.

A summary paper is usually given to help a teacher see how well a student understands a reading assignment, but also to help the student digest the reading. Sometimes, it can be difficult to understand things we read right away.

However, a good way to process the information is to put it in our own words. That is the point of a summary paper.

A summary paper is:

• A way to explain in our own words what happened in a paper, book, etc.
• A time to think about what was important in the paper, etc.
• A time to think about the meaning and purpose behind the paper, etc.

Here are some things that a summary paper is not:

• A review. Your thoughts and opinions on the thing you are summarizing don’t need to be here unless otherwise specified.
• A comparison. A comparison paper has a lot of summary in it, but it is different than a summary paper. In this, you are just saying what happened, but you aren’t saying places it could have been done differently.
• A paraphrase (though you might have a little paraphrasing in there). In the section on using summary in longer papers, I talk more about the difference between summaries, paraphrases, and quotes.

Because a summary paper is usually longer than other forms of summary, you will be able to chose more detail. However, it still needs to focus on the important events. Summary papers are usually shorter papers.

Let’s say you are writing a 3–4 page summary. You are likely summarizing a full book or an article or short story, which will be much longer than 3–4 pages.

Imagine that you are the author of the work, and your editor comes to you and says they love what you wrote, but they need it to be 3–4 pages instead.

How would you tell that story (argument, idea, etc.) in that length without losing the heart or intent behind it? That is what belongs in a summary paper.

How Do I Write Useful Academic Notes?

Sometimes, you need to write a summary for yourself in the form of notes or for your classmates in the form of a discussion post.

You might not think you need a specific approach for this. After all, only you are going to see it.

However, summarizing for yourself can sometimes be the most difficult type of summary. If you try to write down everything your teacher says, your hand will cramp and you’ll likely miss a lot.

Yet, transcribing doesn’t work because studies show that writing things down (not typing them) actually helps you remember them better.

So how do you find the balance between summarizing the lessons without leaving out important points?

There are some tips for this:

• If your professor writes it on the board, it is probably important.
• What points do your textbooks include when summarizing information? Use these as a guide.
• Write the highlight of every X amount of time, with X being the time you can go without missing anything or getting tired. This could be one point per minute, or three per five minutes, etc.

How Do I Create an Annotated Biography?

An annotated bibliography requires a very specific style of writing. Often, you will write these before a longer research paper . They will ask you to find a certain amount of articles and write a short annotation for each of them.

While an annotation is more than just a summary, it usually starts with a summary of the work. This will be about 2–3 sentences long. Because you don’t have a lot of room, you really have to think about what the most important thing the work says is.

This will basically ask you to explain the point of the article in these couple of sentences, so you should focus on the main point when expressing it.

Here is an example of a summary section within an annotation about this post:

“In this post, the author explains how to write a summary in different types of settings. She walks through academic, professional, and personal summaries. Ultimately, she claims that summaries should be short explanations that get the audience caught up on the topic without leaving out details that would change the meaning.”

Can I Write a Summary Within an Essay?

Perhaps the most common type of summary you will ever do is a short summary within a longer paper.

For example, if you have to write an argumentative essay, you will likely need to use sources to help support your argument.

However, there is a good chance that your readers won’t have read those same sources.

So, you need to give them enough detail to understand your topic without spending too much time explaining and not enough making your argument.

While this depends on exactly how you are using summary in your paper, often, a good amount of summary is the same amount you would put in an annotation.

Just a few sentences will allow the reader to get an idea of the work before moving on to specific parts of it that might help your argument.

What’s the Difference Between Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Using Quotes?

One important thing to recognize when using summaries in academic settings is that summaries are different than paraphrases or quotes.

A summary is broader and more general. A paraphrase, on the other hand, puts specific parts into your own words. A quote uses the exact words of the original. All of them, however, need to be cited.

Let’s look at an example:

Take these words by Thomas J. Watson:

”Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t as all. You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where you will find success.”

Let’s say I was told to write a summary, a paraphrase, and a quote about this statement. This is what it might look like:

Summary: Thomas J. Watson said that the key to success is actually to fail more often. (This is broad and doesn’t go into details about what he says, but it still gives him credit.)

Paraphrase: Thomas J. Watson, on asking if people would like his formula for success, said that the secret was to fail twice as much. He claimed that when you decide to learn from your mistakes instead of being disappointed by them, and when you start making a lot of them, you will actually find more success. (This includes most of the details, but it is in my own words, while still crediting the source.)

Quote: Thomas J. Watson said, ”Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where you will find success.” (This is the exact words of the original with quotation marks and credit given.)

Avoiding Plagiarism

One of the hardest parts about summarizing someone else’s writing is avoiding plagiarism .

That’s why I have a few rules/tips for you when summarizing anything:

1. Always cite.

If you are talking about someone else’s work in any means, cite your source. If you are summarizing the entire work, all you probably need to do (depending on style guidelines) is say the author’s name. However, if you are summarizing a specific chapter or section, you should state that specifically. Finally, you should make sure to include it in your Work Cited or Reference page.

2. Change the wording.

Sometimes when people are summarizing or paraphrasing a work, they get too close to the original, and actually use the exact words. Unless you use quotation marks, this is plagiarism. However, a good way to avoid this is to hide the article while you are summarizing it. If you don’t have it in front of you, you are less likely to accidentally use the exact words. (However, after you are done, double check that you didn’t miss anything important or give wrong details.)

3. Use a plagiarism checker.

Of course, when you are writing any summary, especially academic summaries, it can be easy to cross the line into plagiarism. If this is a place where you struggle, then ProWritingAid can help.

Just use our Plagiarism Report . It’ll highlight any unoriginal text in your document so you can make sure you are citing everything correctly and summarizing in your own words.

Find out more about ProWritingAid plagiarism bundles.

Along with academic summaries, you might sometimes need to write professional summaries. Often, this means writing a summary about yourself that shows why you are qualified for a position or organization.

In this section, let’s talk about two types of professional summaries: a LinkedIn summary and a summary section within a resume.

How Do I Write My LinkedIn Bio?

LinkedIn is all about professional networking. It offers you a chance to share a brief glimpse of your professional qualifications in a paragraph or two.

This can then be sent to professional connections, or even found by them without you having to reach out. This can help you get a job or build your network.

Your summary is one of the first things a future employer might see about you, and how you write yours can make you stand out from the competition.

Here are some tips on writing a LinkedIn summary :

• Before you write it, think about what you want it to do . If you are looking for a job, what kind of job? What have you done in your past that would stand out to someone hiring for that position? That is what you will want to focus on in your summary.
• Be professional . Unlike many social media platforms, LinkedIn has a reputation for being more formal. Your summary should reflect that to some extent.
• Use keywords . Your summary is searchable, so using keywords that a recruiter might be searching for can help them find you.
• Focus on the start . LinkedIn shows the first 300 characters automatically, and then offers the viewer a chance to read more. Make that start so good that everyone wants to keep reading.
• Focus on accomplishments . Think of your life like a series of albums, and this is your speciality “Greatest Hits” album. What “songs” are you putting on it?

How Do I Summarize My Experience on a Resume?

Writing a professional summary for a resume is different than any other type of summary that you may have to do.

Recruiters go through a lot of resumes every day. They don’t have time to spend ages reading yours, which means you have to wow them quickly.

To do that, you might include a section at the top of your resume that acts almost as an elevator pitch: That one thing you might say to a recruiter to get them to want to talk to you if you only had a 30-second elevator ride.

If you don’t have a lot of experience, though, you might want to skip this section entirely and focus on playing up the experience you do have.

Outside of academic and personal summaries, you use summary a lot in your day-to-day life.

Whether it is telling a good piece of trivia you just learned or a funny story that happened to you, or even setting the stage in creative writing, you summarize all the time.

How you use summary can be an important consideration in whether people want to read your work (or listen to you talk).

Here are some things to think about when telling a story:

• Pick interesting details . Too many and your point will be lost. Not enough, and you didn’t paint the scene or give them a complete idea about what happened.
• Play into the emotions . When telling a story, you want more information than the bare minimum. You want your reader to get the emotion of the story. That requires a little bit more work to accomplish.
• Focus. A summary of one story can lead to another can lead to another. Think about storytellers that you know that go off on a tangent. They never seem to finish one story without telling 100 others!

To wrap up (and to demonstrate everything I just talked about), let’s summarize this post into its most essential parts:

A summary is a great way to quickly give your audience the information they need to understand the topic you are discussing without having to know every detail.

How you write a summary is different depending on what type of summary you are doing:

• An academic summary usually gets to the heart of an article, book, or journal, and it should highlight the main points in your own words. How long it should be depends on the type of assignment it is.
• A professional summary highlights you and your professional, academic, and volunteer history. It shows people in your professional network who you are and why they should hire you, work with you, use your talents, etc.

Being able to tell a good story is another form of summary. You want to tell engaging anecdotes and facts without boring your listeners. This is a skill that is developed over time.

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Ashley Shaw is a former editor and marketer/current PhD student and teacher. When she isn't studying con artists for her dissertation, she's thinking of new ways to help college students better understand and love the writing process. You can follow her on Twitter, or, if you prefer animal accounts, follow her rabbits, Audrey Hopbun and Fredra StaHare, on Instagram.

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Everything You Need To Know About Writing a Summary

Wondering why summary writing is important? Knowing how to compose one is an essential skill not just for students but for anyone who wants to understand and communicate complex ideas clearly. In this post, we’ll provide five easy steps and more to teach you how to write a summary.

Table of Contents

What is a summary, how to write a summary in five easy steps, example of a summary, tips on writing a good summary.

Mastering the art of summary writing is crucial, but do you know why? Well, you might be surprised to learn that knowing how to craft one can help you become a better learner and communicator. If you have yet to sharpen this skill set, don’t worry. Below, we’ll go through five easy steps to write a good summary , complete with examples and tips.

Let’s begin!

A summary is a concise distillation of a larger body of work that briefly but thoroughly encapsulates its main ideas and essential points. It is designed to give the reader a clear understanding of the original project without needing to read it in full.  

Being able to restate in your own words what you’ve just read is a sign that you’ve truly absorbed and understood the information. In contrast, merely memorizing facts is not a good indication of comprehension. In other words, if you can’t concisely summarize something, you haven’t fully grasped the concept.

The word summary is a noun that refers to the “concise but comprehensive rewriting of an original body of work.”

• I had to write a summary of one of Mark Twain’s stories.

The verb form of this word is to summarize , which means “to provide a summary of something.”

• She missed the presentation, so I summarized it for her.

Now that we’ve reviewed what a summary entails, let’s get to the fun part: writing one!

Keep in mind that summaries can encompass a wide range of subjects, including books, articles, movies, meetings, and more. Also, a summarization isn’t necessarily always confined to writing; you can verbally summarize something, too. However, the steps below are designed to help you compose a written summary.

1. Read and take notes. 

First things first: Read or watch the original work you’ll be summarizing. While you do, take brief pauses and explain to yourself what you just read or watched. As the main ideas start becoming clear to you, take notes. This will make the writing process easier.

2. Start with an introductory sentence.

In academic and formal contexts, summaries typically begin with an introductory sentence that states the work’s title and author. This sets the stage for the reader by immediately identifying what is being discussed. However, if the work has already been identified, it may not be necessary to start with the title and author. For example, if you’re in a class that is currently discussing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, then you may not need to include that information in the introduction.

3. Explain the main points.

Identify and elaborate on the main arguments or messages, and seek supporting evidence, topic sentences, or thesis statements .

It’s also a good idea to focus on the what, how, and why:

• What are the key ideas or events?
• How do they develop throughout the work?
• Why are they important to the work’s overall message?

Remember, be selective in what you include. Summaries are about the bigger picture, not the small details. 

4. Organize your summary to ensure a smooth flow.

Your summary should be coherent and easy to read. Therefore, you should use transition words to ensure logical progression from one idea to the next. It’s best to structure your summary similarly to the original work. Despite being a condensed version, it should still stand on its own as a cohesive piece of writing. In other words, ensure that there is a clear beginning, middle, and end.

5. Conclude by restating the author’s thesis. 

Finish your summary with a clear statement that effectively captures the author’s main argument or purpose. Keep in mind that the conclusion of a summary should not introduce new information but instead provide a sense of closure. This will leave the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the original text.

Imagine you’re taking a class on Shakespeare, and you’re assigned to write a one-paragraph summary of Romeo and Juliet. It should be similar to the following example:

“Romeo and Juliet” is a tragic play that tells the story of two young, star-crossed lovers. It begins with a street brawl between servants from the wealthy Montague and Capulet families and ends with two shocking deaths that ultimately reconcile a long-time feud. Romeo, a Montague, falls in love with Juliet, a Capulet, at a masquerade ball. Despite their families’ conflict, they marry in secret. After Romeo is banished for avenging the death of his friend, Juliet fakes her death to be with him. The plan goes awry, leading to Romeo and Juliet’s actual deaths. When the families learn of the tragic sequence of events, they decide to end their bitter feud once and for all.

It’s important to note that the length of the summary depends on the assignment’s instructions. It is possible to write a longer summary of Romeo and Juliet, if needed, by providing some more details and elaborating on the play’s themes.

How Long Should a Summary Be?

Some guidelines suggest that summaries should be 10%-30% of the original work, so it often depends on the complexity of the text and the intended purpose. If you’re writing a summary for school and are unsure how long it should be, ask your instructor for clarification.

As you work on your summary, keep the following tips in mind:

Take notes as you read.

We already mentioned this, but it’s worth reiterating. Taking notes as you read the original work is an easy way to simplify the summary writing process. The notes don’t have to be extensive; they just have to help you remember the important points.

Use your own words.

Don’t just copy and paste from the original work. Instead, analyze it and restate it. Imagine you and a friend just read an article. You understand it, but your friend doesn’t. You wouldn’t just reread it, hoping that a second reading would miraculously become clearer, right? No, you’d reword it. That’s precisely what you have to do when writing a summary.

Do not include opinions or interpretations.

A summary’s purpose is to restate the original text concisely. Avoid writing about your opinions or judgments about the work, and do not include elaborate interpretations.

Ensure proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

You can follow all the steps above and even ensure you abide by these tips. But if your summary is riddled with errors, it won’t be as effective. A simple way to ensure flawless spelling, grammar, and punctuation is to use LanguageTool as your personal writing assistant. Not only will it correct any mistakes, but it will also enhance your style. Plus, it supports more than thirty languages and dialects, so whether you’re writing in your native tongue or your second language, your instructors will be utterly impressed with your prose.

Go ahead and give it a try today!

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• How to Write a Summary

Proficient students understand that  summarizing , identifying what is most important and restating the text (or other media) in your own words, is an important tool for college success.

After all, if you really know a subject, you will be able to summarize it. If you cannot summarize a subject, even if you have memorized all the facts about it, you can be absolutely sure that you have not learned it. And, if you truly learn the subject, you will still be able to summarize it months or years from now.

Proficient students may monitor their understanding of a text by summarizing as they read. They understand that if they can write a one- or two-sentence summary of each paragraph after reading it, then that is a good sign that they have correctly understood it. If they can not summarize the main idea of the paragraph, they know that comprehension has broken down and they need to use fix-up strategies to repair understanding.

Summary Writing Format

• When writing a summary, remember that it should be in the form of a paragraph.
• A summary begins with an introductory sentence that states the text’s title, author and main point of the text as you see it.
• A summary is written in your own words.
• A summary contains only the ideas of the original text. Do not insert any of your own opinions, interpretations, deductions or comments into a summary.
• Identify in order the significant sub-claims the author uses to defend the main point.
• Copy word-for-word three separate passages from the essay that you think support and/or defend the main point of the essay as you see it.
• Cite each passage by first signaling the work and the author, put “quotation marks” around the passage you chose, and put the number of the paragraph where the passages can be found immediately after the passage.
• Using source material from the essay is important. Why? Because defending claims with source material is what you will be asked to do when writing papers for your college professors.
• Write a last sentence that “wraps” up your summary; often a simple rephrasing of the main point.

Example Summary Writing Format

In the essay Santa Ana , author Joan Didion’s main point is ( state main point ). According to Didion “… passage 1 …” (para.3). Didion also writes “… passage 2 …” (para.8). Finally, she states “… passage 3 …” (para. 12) Write a last sentence that “wraps” up your summary; often a simple rephrasing of the main point.

• Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : http://lumenlearning.com/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Paul Powell. Provided by : Central Community College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Elisabeth Ellington and Ronda Dorsey Neugebauer. Provided by : Chadron State College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Table of Contents

Instructor Resources (Access Requires Login)

• Overview of Instructor Resources

An Overview of the Writing Process

• Introduction to the Writing Process
• Introduction to Writing
• Your Role as a Learner
• What is an Essay?
• Reading to Write
• Defining the Writing Process
• Videos: Prewriting Techniques
• Thesis Statements
• Organizing an Essay
• Creating Paragraphs
• Conclusions
• Editing and Proofreading
• Matters of Grammar, Mechanics, and Style
• Peer Review Checklist
• Comparative Chart of Writing Strategies

Using Sources

• Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism
• Formatting the Works Cited Page (MLA)
• Citing Paraphrases and Summaries (APA)
• APA Citation Style, 6th edition: General Style Guidelines

Definition Essay

• Definitional Argument Essay
• How to Write a Definition Essay
• Critical Thinking
• Video: Thesis Explained
• Effective Thesis Statements
• Student Sample: Definition Essay

Narrative Essay

• Introduction to Narrative Essay
• Student Sample: Narrative Essay
• "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell
• "Sixty-nine Cents" by Gary Shteyngart
• Video: The Danger of a Single Story
• How to Write an Annotation
• Writing for Success: Narration

Illustration/Example Essay

• Introduction to Illustration/Example Essay
• "She's Your Basic L.O.L. in N.A.D" by Perri Klass
• "April & Paris" by David Sedaris
• Writing for Success: Illustration/Example
• Student Sample: Illustration/Example Essay

Compare/Contrast Essay

• Introduction to Compare/Contrast Essay
• "Disability" by Nancy Mairs
• "Friending, Ancient or Otherwise" by Alex Wright
• "A South African Storm" by Allison Howard
• Writing for Success: Compare/Contrast
• Student Sample: Compare/Contrast Essay

Cause-and-Effect Essay

• Introduction to Cause-and-Effect Essay
• "Cultural Baggage" by Barbara Ehrenreich
• "Women in Science" by K.C. Cole
• Writing for Success: Cause and Effect
• Student Sample: Cause-and-Effect Essay

Argument Essay

• Introduction to Argument Essay
• Rogerian Argument
• "The Case Against Torture," by Alisa Soloman
• "The Case for Torture" by Michael Levin
• How to Write a Summary by Paraphrasing Source Material
• Writing for Success: Argument
• Student Sample: Argument Essay
• Grammar/Mechanics Mini-lessons
• Mini-lesson: Subjects and Verbs, Irregular Verbs, Subject Verb Agreement
• Mini-lesson: Sentence Types
• Mini-lesson: Fragments I
• Mini-lesson: Run-ons and Comma Splices I
• Mini-lesson: Comma Usage
• Mini-lesson: Parallelism
• Mini-lesson: The Apostrophe
• Mini-lesson: Capital Letters
• Grammar Practice - Interactive Quizzes
• De Copia - Demonstration of the Variety of Language
• Style Exercise: Voice

Summarizing

by jleemcga | Aug 18, 2023 | Resources for Students , Writing Resources

What is summarizing?

A summary of a text is a short overview of the main ideas written in your own words. While paraphrasing involves expressing specific ideas or details from a larger text in your own words, we generally summarize whole texts (whether it is an essay, article, chapter, book, et cetera). So, in order to ensure our summaries are not too wordy or confusing, we only cover the main ideas or argument presented within a whole text.

It’s best to summarize when you’re contextualizing a topic by letting your readers know about the current, ongoing conversation. By summarizing relevant sources, you’re providing your audience with an overview of what has already been said about this topic to help them understand how you’ll be adding to it. Summarizing material within your paper allows you to:

• Condense key ideas or arguments relevant to your paper
• Simplify the connection between a source and your own writing

How do I summarize?

To approach summarizing a source, try the following steps:

• First make sure you carefully read the original source material to understand it. Like paraphrasing, summarizing effectively requires an accurate understanding of the source material
• Identify all the main ideas from the text. It helps to look for the thesis or overall claim the author is presenting, as well as any important reasons they give to back their claim. Basically, you’re looking for why their argument is what it is
• When you begin your summary, you might use a TAG line. This stands for Title, Author, Genre and allows you to formally introduce the text before you summarize its ideas. An example of a TAG line is: In the article “Stuck on the Streets of San Francisco in a Driverless Car”, Cade Metz reports … TAG lines add a helpful framework for the summary
• Be sure not to include any specific examples, details, or evidence from the text. In summaries, we don’t describe the author’s examples (this would be like rewriting the entire text). Instead, we offer a map of the main idea and major points
• Once you finish writing your summary, check to make sure your summary concisely and accurately captures the author’s main ideas
• Remember to cite!

Examples of summarizing

Here is an example of a writer summarizing a main idea from the source Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected by Lisa Marie Cacho in their essay about a Salvadoran poet and her poetry’s relationship to reclaiming identity:

The ambiguity that is scored onto the bodies of Salvadoran migrants creates an impoverished sense of time and freedom by keeping these individuals indefinitely “temporary,” an ephemera that imposes a constant threat against safety and belonging for Salvadorans in the US. This weaponization of time also contributes to the condition of social death that Cacho describes as being prevalent for people of color, and particularly immigrants, in the US. According to Cacho, part of the criminalization of people of color within the US— not based on one’s behavior, but by their appearance— is heightened further by the notion of documentation. The rhetoric surrounding immigration in the US ultimately aims to invalidate those without documentation by using slurs like “illegal” (Cacho).

Note: The writer quotes some key terms, like “temporary” or “illegal” that the author emphasizes in the original source but describes the main ideas of the source in their own words. Note, too, that the summary focuses on the big-picture ideas of the source without mentioning examples that are too specific.

Things to keep in mind when summarizing

Some important things to remain mindful of while summarizing in your assignments are:

• There is no specified length for writing summaries; they may be a few sentences or a few paragraphs depending on your writing project. For most academic essays, a summary of a few sentences to a short paragraph is appropriate. Concision is key
• Do not include your opinions on the topic or the author’s ideas in your summary; your ideas are important, but summary is a genre of writing that requires objectivity
• Do not include specific details or examples from the text—just focus on the big picture ideas

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Now everyone can be a mathematician with the new apple math notes app, how to write a dissertation proposal, how to write a book title in an essay, elon musk criticizes apple’s ai approach and threatens device ban, how to summarize an essay.

College and high school students (as well as maybe some middle schoolers) will often face the task of summarizing a book, article, video, or anything they’ve seen/read. Sometimes, you will have to create summaries for yourself, so that you understand the material better. Other times though, you will have to write summary essays, the main purpose of which is to give others an overview of the original source. In both cases, summaries look somewhat the same: they are concise, contain only the most crucial points, and pass on the key idea or essence of the initial material, be it a movie or a book. To serve that purpose, summaries need to be well-written and we will show you exactly how to summarize an essay in the most effective format.

The Key Parts of a Summary: Structure

As a student, you know that most writing tasks have guidelines. You also most probably know that, if you are asked to write a certain type of writing, it has a specific structure and format. See, that’s why you can’t write summaries at random too. 

Thus, before starting the writing process, let’s first figure out what structure this type of writing has. This will allow you to create a summary essay outline that will make it easy for you to include all the essential information and will guide you throughout the writing process as well. 

Here’s what you absolutely have to include in your essay summary:

• Introduction + thesis, which will provide readers with all the necessary details about the work (title, author, etc) and its key idea
• Body paragraphs that support the main point of the essay and therefore include all the necessary details that show how the author justifies their claims
• Conclusion paragraph, which is usually one sentence that may rephrase the main idea and which is called to tie everything together.

You can use our checklist below to help you track down whether you included all the necessary components:

Writing a Summary Essay: Detailed Guide

Before jumping straight to writing, let’s see what we now know about these special summaries:

• What is a summary essay? – Check✅ It’s a concise overview of the essay you’ve read that communicates the key ideas of the material.
• What parts does a summary essay have? – Another check✅ Introduction, with details about the essay + thesis statement; body, with the summary of the main points; conclusion, which wraps up the key idea of the essay.
• How to write a Summary? – ⚠️This one we will break down further in this paragraph.

One would think that the guide to writing a summary couldn’t be that complex: just read the text, sit down, and write. However, if you scroll through the writing guide below, you will see that there are nuances.

Read & Study

First things first, get to know what the essay is about. Read through it carefully. If it helps you, take notes as you read, marking the most important arguments and ideas that need mentioning in your essay. A good thing is you can get a feeling for the author’s style, tone, and mood, and try to identify the main claims they made.

Divide & Outline

After you are done reading, break down the essay into several sections. Breaking the text into several parts will make the material easier to grasp. With their help, you can also create a rough outline of what your summary will look like.

Identify Key Ideas

Read each part you divided the essay into once more. This time, highlight some of the key points. Mark areas you want to refer to in your summary, as well as those that shouldn’t be included in your essay. If you are struggling with this part of the process, you can try using an AI summary generator for some help. During this stage, you should also be able to identify the general message and the essence of the essay.

Create an Introduction

You now have all the necessary details to be able to begin summarizing. Start with an introduction with an opening line that includes the name of the author and the title of their essay. Follow that information with a rather broad overview of the content of the work you will be summarizing. Sometimes, if it is important to understand the essay, you may present here the author’s background as well. And don’t forget the thesis statement that transmits the purpose/point of the work.

Move on to the Body

In the main body paragraphs, state the ideas you’ve chosen while reading the text. Expand on them by including one or more examples from the original text. Don’t forget to include citations if you do that. Our citation generator can give a hand with that.

Quick Citations for Your Convenience

Also, in this part, you can mention any supportive points given in the original text. These could be examples, or stories (but brief or rephrased) that the author originally mentioned.

Finish with a Conclusion & References

Phew, we are at the finish line now. All that is left is to write a concluding paragraph, which is usually around 2-3 sentences tops. Here you need to basically rewrite the thesis statement, once again emphasizing the main purpose or claim of the original source. After that, don’t forget to include a properly formatted reference of the original source to acknowledge the writer. It is not always a requirement but it is especially needed if you include quotes in the text of your summary.

Review & Proofread

Okay, the hardest part is left behind. You can now read through what you’ve written. Make sure everything sounds logical and clear. Pay attention to grammatical and punctuation mistakes. Try reading it aloud or giving it to somebody else to read it for you. This will help you pinpoint places that need improvement and maybe throughout 1 or 2 unnecessary details.

Dos and Don’ts of Summary Essay Writing

Look at you, knowing all this about writing an essay summary. Good for you! And what’s more, you can basically complete any type of summary now, just switching up its content. However, we are not done with teaching you yet. We got the basics settled, so now it’s time to get to the advanced stuff. These are the dos and don’ts that will serve as boosters for your writing. Keeping these tips in mind will help you craft your summaries more quickly and will largely reduce the proofreading time.

Essay Summary Example for Inspiration

Here’s a simple example of a summary of an essay that can serve as a sample and inspiration for your work:

How do you write a summary of an essay?

If you want to create a good summary, start by carefully reading. You need to understand its main ideas and arguments. Then, in your own words, write a brief overview that captures the essay’s central theme and key points. Don’t forget to include the author’s thesis statement and the evidence they use to support their argument. Keep your summary short and focused, avoiding any personal opinions or unnecessary details. 

How do I summarize my essay?

In case it’s your own essay you want to summarize, you should follow the same steps: identify your main argument, outline the supporting points, and then communicate this information in a short overview that gives a clear idea of your essay’s content.

What are the 5 parts of a summary?

Even though we mentioned only 3 major parts of the summary in our article, most summaries can be broken down into 5 aspects: introduction, thesis, body, conclusion, and references. Each of these is important for creating an all-inclusive summary.

What are the rules for summary essay?

Okay, let’s go over the basic summary rules once again. The summary should be short (around ¼ of the original) and concise (include only the most essential information without repetition). Additionally, this writing type should follow a logical structure, meaning you need to uncover the important facts in the same order as they are presented in the essay. Lastly, essay summaries should be independent. The readers chose to look through the summary because they didn’t want to read the whole text. Hence, they need to be able to learn everything important mentioned in the original.

What words should you start a summary essay with?

Usually, a summary of an essay starts with an introductory sentence that includes the name of the author, the title of the work, and the general idea of the text as you perceive it. Remember, you should describe everything in your own words, both to avoid plagiarism and to show your understanding of the material.

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• How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

Published on 25 September 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 12 May 2023.

Summarising , or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.

There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:

• Read the text
• Break it down into sections
• Identify the key points in each section
• Write the summary
• Check the summary against the article

Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or analysing the source. You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).

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Table of contents

When to write a summary, step 1: read the text, step 2: break the text down into sections, step 3: identify the key points in each section, step 4: write the summary, step 5: check the summary against the article, frequently asked questions.

There are many situations in which you might have to summarise an article or other source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
• To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
• To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

When you’re writing an academic text like an essay , research paper , or dissertation , you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.

But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyse or critique it.

In any case, the goal of summarising is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

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You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it. It’s often effective to read in three stages:

• Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
• Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you read.
• Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any particularly important or difficult passages.

There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:

• Start by reading the abstract . This already contains the author’s own summary of their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
• Pay attention to headings and subheadings . These should give you a good sense of what each part is about.
• Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?

To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organised into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction, methods, results, and discussion.

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part.

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement —the central claim that the author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of the author’s key points.

Examples of article summaries

Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarise this article , which scientifically investigates the old saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’.

An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an article.

For example, in a literature review or research paper, you may want to briefly summarize this study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style , but it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation generators.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

• You’ve accurately represented the author’s work
• You haven’t missed any essential information
• The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarising many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.

A summary is a short overview of the main points of an article or other source, written entirely in your own words.

Save yourself some time with the free summariser.

A summary is always much shorter than the original text. The length of a summary can range from just a few sentences to several paragraphs; it depends on the length of the article you’re summarising, and on the purpose of the summary.

With the summariser tool you can easily adjust the length of your summary.

You might have to write a summary of a source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to prove you understand the material
• For your own use, to keep notes on your reading
• To provide an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
• In a paper , to summarise or introduce a relevant study

To avoid plagiarism when summarising an article or other source, follow these two rules:

• Write the summary entirely in your own words by   paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
• Reference the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

An abstract concisely explains all the key points of an academic text such as a thesis , dissertation or journal article. It should summarise the whole text, not just introduce it.

An abstract is a type of summary , but summaries are also written elsewhere in academic writing . For example, you might summarise a source in a paper , in a literature review , or as a standalone assignment.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, May 12). How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 18 June 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/working-sources/how-to-write-a-summary/

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Other students also liked, how to paraphrase | step-by-step guide & examples, how to quote | citing quotes in harvard & apa, apa referencing (7th ed.) quick guide | in-text citations & references.

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How to Write a Summary

Last Updated: March 17, 2024 Approved

This article was co-authored by Richard Perkins . Richard Perkins is a Writing Coach, Academic English Coordinator, and the Founder of PLC Learning Center. With over 24 years of education experience, he gives teachers tools to teach writing to students and works with elementary to university level students to become proficient, confident writers. Richard is a fellow at the National Writing Project. As a teacher leader and consultant at California State University Long Beach's Global Education Project, Mr. Perkins creates and presents teacher workshops that integrate the U.N.'s 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the K-12 curriculum. He holds a BA in Communications and TV from The University of Southern California and an MEd from California State University Dominguez Hills. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 26 testimonials and 89% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 1,828,153 times.

Writing a summary is a great way to process the information you read, whether it’s an article or a book. If you’re assigned a summary in school, the best way to approach it is by reviewing the piece you’re summarizing. Read it thoroughly and take notes on the major points you want to include in your summary. When you get to writing your summary, rely on your memory first to make sure the summary is in your own words. Then, revise it to ensure that your writing is clear and the grammar, punctuation, and spelling are all perfect.

Sample Summaries

Reviewing the Piece

• The author might also state their thesis more plainly by saying something like "my argument is...." or I believe...
• In a fiction piece, the author will more likely emphasize themes. So if you notice that love - discussions or descriptions of it, for example - come up a lot, one of the main points of the piece is probably love.

• To put something in your own words, write it down as if you were explaining or describing it to a friend. In that case, you wouldn't just read what the author wrote. Do the same when you're writing down the major points in your own words.

• For fiction pieces, this means avoiding rewriting every single thing that happens in the piece. Focus instead on the major plot points and the main motivator for those points. Don't include everything that happens to the character along the way.

Writing The Summary in Your Own Words

• For example, you can start with something like “George Shaw’s '‘Pygmalion’' is a play that addresses issues of class and culture in early twentieth-century England.”

• If you absolutely must use the original author’s words, put them in quotation marks. This tells your reader those words aren’t yours. Not doing this is academic plagiarism, and it can get you in a lot of trouble.
• Make sure you format the quote correctly!

• For example, you might think that Hamlet spends a lot of time thinking and not a lot of time acting. You can say something like, "Hamlet is a man of thought, rather than action," instead of saying, "Why doesn't Hamlet do something once in a while?"

• In fiction pieces, you can say something like "Shakespeare's Hamlet then spends a lot of time brooding on the castle ramparts." This tells your reader you're talking about Shakespeare's play, not inventing your own story.

Revising Your Draft into a Coherent Summary

• If you notice an author has made the same point multiple times, though, it’s a good indicator that this is an important point, and it should definitely be in your summary.

• For example, in a summary of an article about the cause of the American Revolution, you might have a paragraph that summarizes the author's arguments about taxes, and another about religious freedom. You can say something like, "Although some colonists believed that taxes should entitle them to representation in Parliament, the author also argues that other colonists supported the Revolution because they believed they were entitled to representation in heaven on their own terms."

• Don't use spell-checker for spelling errors. It will catch if you spell something wrong, but not if you use the wrong spelling of a word. For example, it won't catch that you used "there" when you meant "their."

• Generally, a summary should be around one quarter the length of the original piece. So if the original piece is 4 pages long, your summary should be no more than 1 page. [13] X Research source

• Not only should they be comparing your work for accuracy, ask them to read it for flow and summation. They should be able understand what happened in the article or story by reading your summary alone. Don't hesitate to ask for criticism; then weigh those criticisms and make valid changes.

Expert Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/comprehension/authorsmainidea.pdf
• ↑ Richard Perkins. Writing Coach & Academic English Coordinator. Expert Interview. 1 September 2021.
• ↑ http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/engl0310/summaryhints.htm
• ↑ https://public.wsu.edu/~mejia/Summary.htm
• ↑ http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Guidelines-for-Writing-a-Summary

About This Article

Before you write a summary, read the piece you’re summarizing, then make notes on what you think the main point and major supporting arguments are. When you’re ready to draft your summary, start with the author and title, then use your own words to write what you think the author’s main point is in each section. Be sure to focus on what the author thinks and feels rather than what you do! Finally, reread your summary and check it for good spelling, punctuation, and grammar. For more suggestions from our reviewer about polishing your summary and improving transitions, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Best Summarizing Tool for Academic Texts

Copy and paste your text

Number of sentences in results:

⚙️ 11 Best Summarizing Tools

• 🤔 How to Summarize an Article without Plagiarizing?
• 📝 How to Proofread Your Summary?

⭐ Best Summarizing Tool: the Benefits

🔗 references, ✅ 11 best summary generators to consider.

We’re here to offer the whole list of text summarizers in this article. Every tool has a strong algorithm so you won’t have to proofread a lot in order to make the summary look hand-written. The usage of such websites can be productive for your studying as long as you can focus on more important tasks and leave this routine work to online tools.

In this blog post, you’ll also find tips on successful summarizing and proofreading. These are basic skills that you will need for many assignments. To summarize text better, you’ll need to read it critically, spot the main idea, underline the essential points, and so on. As for proofreading, this skill is useful not only to students but also to professional writers.

To summarize a text, a paragraph or even an essay, you can find a lot of tools online. Here we’ll list some of these, including those that allow choose the percent of similarity and define the length of the text you’ll get.

If you’re asked to summarize some article or paragraph in your own words, one of these summary makers can become significant for getting fast results. Their user-friendly design and accurate algorithms play an important role in the summary development.

1. Summarize Bot

Summarize Bot is an easy-to-use and ad-free software for fast and accurate summary creation in our list. With its help, you can save your time for research by compressing texts. The summary maker shows the reading time, which it saves for you, and other useful statistics. To summarize any text, you should only send the message in Facebook or add the bot to Slack. The app works with various file types: including PDF, mp3, DOC, TXT, jpg, etc., and supports almost every language.

The only drawback is the absence of web version. If you don’t have a Facebook account and don’t want to install Slack, you won’t be able to enjoy this app’s features.

SMMRY has everything you need for a perfect summary—easy to use design, lots of features, and advanced settings (URL usage). If you look for a web service that changes the wording, this one would never disappoint you.

SMMRY allows you to summarize the text not only by copy-pasting but also with the file uploading or URL inserting. The last one is especially interesting. With this option, you don’t have to edit an article in any way. Just put the URL into the field and get the result. The tool is ad-free and doesn’t require registration.

Jasper is an AI-powered summary generator. It creates unique, plagiarism-free summaries, so it’s a perfect option for those who don’t want to change the wording on their own.

When using this tool, you can summarize a text of up to 12,000 characters (roughly 2,000-3,000 words) in more than 30 languages. Although Jasper doesn’t have a free plan, it offers a 7-day free trial to let you see whether this tool meets your needs.

4. Quillbot

Quillbot offers many tools for students and writers, and summarizer is one of them. With this tool, you can customize your summary length and choose between two modes: paragraph and key sentences. The former presents a summary as a coherent paragraph, while the latter gives you key ideas of the text in the form of bullet points.

What is great about Quillbot is that you can use it for free. However, there’s a limitation: you can only summarize a text of up to 1,200 words on a free plan. A premium plan extends this limit to 6,000 words. In addition, you don’t need to register to use Quillbot summarizer; just input your text and get the result.

5. TLDR This

TLDR This is a summary generator that can help you quickly summarize long text. You can paste your paper directly into the tool or provide it with a URL of the article you want to shorten.

With a free plan, you have unlimited attempts to summarize texts in the form of key sentences. TLDR This also provides advanced AI summaries, but you have only 10 of these on a free plan. To get more of them, you have to go premium, which starts at $4 per month.

HIX.AI summarizer is an AI-powered tool that can help you summarize texts of up to 10,000 characters. If you use Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, HIX.AI has a convenient extension for you.

You can use the tool for free to check 1,000 words per week. Along with this, you get access to over 120 other AI-powered tools to help you with your writing tasks. These include essay checker, essay rewriter, essay topic generator, and many others. With a premium plan, which starts at $19.99 a month billed yearly, you also get access to GPT-4 and other advanced features.

7. Scholarcy

Scholarcy is one of the best tools for summarizing academic articles. It presents summaries in the form of flashcards, which can be downloaded as Word, PowerPoint, or Markdown files.

This tool has some outstanding features for students and researchers. For example, it creates a referenced summary, which makes it easier for you to cite the information correctly in your paper. In addition, it can find the references from the summarized article and provide you with open-access links to them. The tool can also extract tables and figures from the text and let you download them as Excel files.

Unregistered users can summarize one article per day. With a free registered account, you can make 3 summary flashcards a day. Moreover, Scholarcy offers free Chrome, Edge, and Firefox extensions that allow you to summarize short and medium-sized articles.

Frase is an AI-powered summary generator that is available for free. The tool can summarize texts of up to 600-700 words. Therefore, it’s good if you want to, say, summarize the main points of your short essay or blog post to write a conclusion. However, if you need summaries of long research articles, you should choose another option.

This summary generator allows you to adjust the level of creativity, meaning that you can generate original, plagiarism-free summaries. Frase also has lots of extra features for SEO and project management, which makes it a good option for website content creators.

9. Resoomer

Resoomer is another paraphrasing and summarizing tool that works with several languages. You’re free to use the app in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

This online tool may be considered as one of the best text summarizers in IvyPanda ranking, because it allows performing many custom settings. For example, you can click to Manual and set the size of the summary (in percent or words). You can also set the number of keywords for the tool to focus on.

Among its drawbacks, we would mention that the software works only with argumentative texts and won’t reword other types correctly. Also, free version contains lots of ads and does not allow its users to import files. The premium subscription costs 4.90€ per month or 39.90€/year.

10. Summarizer

Summarizer is another good way to summarize any article you read online. This simple Chrome extension will provide you with a summary within a couple of clicks. Install the add-on, open the article or select the piece of text you want to summarize and click the button “Summarize”.

The software processes various texts in your browser, including long PDF articles. The result of summarizing has only 7% of the original article. This app is great for all who don’t want to read long publications. However, it doesn’t allow you to import file or download the result.

11. Summary Generator

The last article and essay Summary Generator in our list which can be helpful for your experience in college or university. This is free open software everyone can use.

The tool has only two buttons—one to summarize the document and the other to clear the field. With this software, you’ll get a brief summary based on your text. You don’t have to register there to get your document shortened.

Speaking about drawbacks of the website, we would mention too many ads and no options to summarize a URL or document, set up the length of the result and export it to the popular file types.

These were the best online summarizing tools to deal with the task effectively. We hope some of them became your favorite summarizers, and you’ll use them often in the future.

Not sure if a summarizer will work for your paper? Check out this short tutorial on how the text summarizing tool can come in handy for essay writing.

🤔 Techniques & Tools to Summarize without Plagiarizing

Of course, there are times when you can’t depend on online tools. For example, you may be restricted to use them in a class or maybe you have to highlight some specific paragraphs and customizing the tool’s settings would take more time and efforts than summary writing itself.

In this chapter, you’ll learn to summarize a long article, essay, research paper, report, or a book chapter with the help of helpful tips, a logical approach, and a little bit of creativity.

Here are some methods to let you create a fantastic summary.

• Know your goal. To choose the right route to your goal, you need to understand it perfectly. Why should you summarize the text? What is its style: scientific or publicistic? Who is the author? Where was the article published? There are many significant questions that can help to adapt your text better. Develop a short interview to use during the summary writing. Include all the important information on where you need to post the text and for what purpose.
• Thorough reading. To systemize your thoughts about the text, it’s significant to investigate it in detail. Read the text two or more times to grasp the basic ideas of the article and understand its goals and motives. Give yourself all the time you need to process the text. Often we need a couple of hours to extract the right results from the study or learn to paraphrase the text properly.
• Highlight the main idea. When writing a summary, you bear a responsibility for the author. Not only you have to extract the significant idea of the text but to paraphrase it correctly. It’s important not to misrepresent any of the author’s conclusions in your summary. That’s why you should find the main idea and make sure, you can paraphrase it without a loss of meaning. If possible, read a couple of professional reviews of a targeted book chapter or article. It can help you to analyze the text better.
• Mark the arguments. The process of summarizing is always easier if you have a marker to highlight important details in the text. If you don’t have a printed text, there’s always Microsoft Word to use a highlight tool on the paper. Try to mark all arguments, statistics, and facts in the text to represent them in your summary. This information will turn into key elements of the summary you’ll create, so keep attention on what you highlight exactly.
• Take care of plagiarism. Before you start writing, learn what percent of originality should you aim at. Various projects have different requirements. And they determine how many efforts you should put into writing to get a perfect summary your teacher will like. Depending on the percent of originality, build a plan for your short text. Allow yourself copy as much information as allowed to save your time.
• Build a structure. With the help of key elements, which you’ve highlighted in the text, it’s possible to create a powerful structure including all the interesting facts and arguments. Develop an outline according to a basic structure – introduction, body, and conclusion. Even if your summary is extremely short, the main idea should sound in both the first and last sentences.
• Write a draft. If you’re not a professional writer, it can be extremely difficult to develop a text with the correct word count on the first try. We advise you to develop a general text firstly – include all the information without controlling the number of sentences.
• Cut out the unnecessary parts. On this step, you should edit the draft and eliminate the unnecessary parts. Keep in mind, the number of sentences your summary must contain. Make sure the main point is fully represented in the text. You can cut out any sentence except those concluding the significant arguments.
• Wordiness – you should delete unnecessary words, which make it difficult to understand the text
• Common mistakes – mistakes made in academic papers are basically the same, so it’s helpful to have an article like this one when you’re proofreading
• Appropriate terminology – for each topic, there’s a list of the terminology you can use
• Facts and statistics – you can accidently write a wrong year or percent, make sure to avoid these mistakes
• Quotes – every quote should be written correctly and have a link to its source.

📝 How to Proofread the Summarized Text?

Now, when you know how to summarize an article, it’s time to edit your text whether it’s your own writing or a summary generator’s results.

In this chapter, you’ll see the basic ways to proofread any type of text: academic paper (essay, research paper, etc.), article, letter, book’s chapter, and so on.

• Proofread your summary. Are there times when you can’t remember an appropriate synonym? Then you should use Thesaurus and analogous services from time to time. They can expand your vocabulary a lot and help to find the right words even in the most challenging situations.
• Pay attention to easily confused words. It’s especially significant if you edit a nonfiction text – there’s a number of words people often confuse without even realizing. English Oxford Living Dictionaries have a list of these word pairs so you won’t miss any.
• Proofread one type of mistakes at a time. To edit a paper properly don’t split your attention to grammar and punctuation—this way you can miss dozens of mistakes. To get more accurate results, read the first time to edit the style, the second to eliminate grammar mistakes, and the third to proofread punctuation. Take as many times as you need to concentrate on each type.
• Take a rest from your paper. If you use an online summarizing tool, you can skip this step. But if you’ve been writing a paper for several hours and now trying to edit it without taking a break, it may be a bad idea. Why? Because without a fresh pair of eyes there’s a great possibility not to spot even obvious mistakes. Give yourself some time to slightly forget the text—go for a walk or call a friend, and then return to work as a new person.
• Hire a proofreader. If you need to get perfect results, think about hiring a professional. Skills and qualification, which they have, guarantee a perfect text without any mistakes or style issues. Once you find a proofreader, you can optimize your work perfectly. Search for specialists on freelance websites like UpWork — it’s comfortable and safe to use. Of course, there’s one flaw you should think about—hiring a pro is expensive. So, everyone should decide on their own whether they need to spend this money or not.
• Switch your paper with a friend. If you can’t afford a professional editor, there’s a less expensive option—ask a friend to look through your paper and proofread theirs in return. Make sure, you both make manual editing, not just check it with Microsoft Office or analogous software. Although there are great grammar tools, they still can’t spot many mistakes obvious to a human.
• Use grammar checking tools. We recommend you not to depend on multiple grammar tools. But the assistance it can offer is irreplaceable. Start your proofreading by scanning your text with Grammarly or an analogous tool. The service detects many types of errors including confusing words’ pairs, punctuation, misspellings, wordiness, incorrect word order, unfinished sentences, and so on. Of course, you should never correct the mistakes without thinking on every specific issue. Tools not only miss a lot of mistakes but they also can be wrong about your errors.
• Read aloud. It’s amazing how different the written text can sound when read aloud. If you practice this proofreading method, you know that many mistakes can be spotted if you actually pronounce the text. Why does it happen? People understand information better if they perceive it with the help of different senses. You can use this trick even in learning— memorize the materials with the help of reading, listening, and speaking.

These tips are developed to help students proofread their papers easily. We hope this chapter and the post itself create a helpful guide on how to summarize an article.

Here you found the best summarizing tools, which are accessible online and completely free, and learned to summarize various texts and articles on your own.

Updated: Dec 19th, 2023

• Summarizing: Academic Integrity at MIT
• 4 of the Best Online Summarizer Tools to Shorten Text: maketecheasier
• Summarizing: University of Toronto
• 5 Easy Summarizing Strategies for Students: ThoughtCo.
• Summarizing: Texas A&M University Writing Center
• Comparative Study of Text Summarization Methods: Semantic Scholar
• How to Write a Summary: UTEP
• How to Write a Summary: UW
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This page is for anyone interested in creating a summary for an essay or any other written work. It lists the best online summarizing tools and gives advice on how to summarize an article well. Finally, you'll find tips on how to properly proofread your summary.

Summarize any | in a click.

TLDR This helps you summarize any piece of text into concise, easy to digest content so you can free yourself from information overload.

Enter an Article URL or paste your Text

Browser extensions.

Use TLDR This browser extensions to summarize any webpage in a click.

Single platform, endless summaries

Transforming information overload into manageable insights — consistently striving for clarity.

100% Automatic Article Summarization with just a click

In the sheer amount of information that bombards Internet users from all sides, hardly anyone wants to devote their valuable time to reading long texts. TLDR This's clever AI analyzes any piece of text and summarizes it automatically, in a way that makes it easy for you to read, understand and act on.

Article Metadata Extraction

TLDR This, the online article summarizer tool, not only condenses lengthy articles into shorter, digestible content, but it also automatically extracts essential metadata such as author and date information, related images, and the title. Additionally, it estimates the reading time for news articles and blog posts, ensuring you have all the necessary information consolidated in one place for efficient reading.

• Automated author-date extraction
• Related images consolidation
• Instant reading time estimation

Distraction and ad-free reading

As an efficient article summarizer tool, TLDR This meticulously eliminates ads, popups, graphics, and other online distractions, providing you with a clean, uncluttered reading experience. Moreover, it enhances your focus and comprehension by presenting the essential content in a concise and straightforward manner, thus transforming the way you consume information online.

Avoid the Clickbait Trap

TLDR This smartly selects the most relevant points from a text, filtering out weak arguments and baseless speculation. It allows for quick comprehension of the essence, without needing to sift through all paragraphs. By focusing on core substance and disregarding fluff, it enhances efficiency in consuming information, freeing more time for valuable content.

• Filters weak arguments and speculation
• Highlights most relevant points
• Saves time by eliminating fluff

Who is TLDR This for?

TLDR This is a summarizing tool designed for students, writers, teachers, institutions, journalists, and any internet user who needs to quickly understand the essence of lengthy content.

Anyone with access to the Internet

TLDR This is for anyone who just needs to get the gist of a long article. You can read this summary, then go read the original article if you want to.

TLDR This is for students studying for exams, who are overwhelmed by information overload. This tool will help them summarize information into a concise, easy to digest piece of text.

TLDR This is for anyone who writes frequently, and wants to quickly summarize their articles for easier writing and easier reading.

TLDR This is for teachers who want to summarize a long document or chapter for their students.

Institutions

TLDR This is for corporations and institutions who want to condense a piece of content into a summary that is easy to digest for their employees/students.

Journalists

TLDR This is for journalists who need to summarize a long article for their newspaper or magazine.

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Focus on the Value, Not the Noise.

Text Summarizer Free AI Summarizing Tool

Need a text summarizer to paraphrase long articles? Use this summarizing tool to easily pull out key points, while paraphrasing text and avoiding plagiarism. Its advanced algorithms (AI-powered) deliver perfectly summarized text in just moments.

Hey there! You’ve hit your free limit for an hour . Don’t worry; you’ll be able to use my tools again in an hour.

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Use My AI Text Summarizer Tool to Instantly Shorten Any Piece of Text—Keeping the Key Points

This AI text summarizer is designed to take any piece of text, such as a newspaper article, blog post, or academic report, and then summarize it with concise summaries. Each summary will be a unique paraphrase of the text you upload, that retains all the main points from your original text. 

You can use this AI text summarizer to summarize lengthy text. Here are some of the best use cases:

• Summarize a blog post you’ve written (or part of a blog post) to use on social media, repurposing the content.
• Summarize research or news articles in your own words—remember to cite your sources, though.
• Summarize a long email or document so you can quickly see the key points for your personal use.

You can also use it in any other situation where you want to quickly and easily produce a short version of a long piece of text.

How to Use the Text Summarizer to Produce a Short Version of Any Text

We designed the text summarizer to be as easy to use as possible, but to help you get the most out of it, here’s what you should know.

Step 1. Paste in the Text to Summarize

You’ll need to choose a passage of text to summarize and then paste it into the summarizer tool’s input box (you can’t paste a URL or upload an image of text). For best results, you’ll want to choose text that’s at least 250 words in length.

Tip: The tool can handle up to 2,000 words at a time. If you’ve got a longer piece that you want to summarize, you could split it into sections.

Step 2. Select Your Tone & Writing Style

By default, the article summarizer will use a fairly neutral tone, similar to that of your input text. But if you want, you can choose a specific tone and writing style for your shortened version of the text.

This is particularly useful if you’re using the summary as part of a longer piece that you’re writing. For instance, if you’re creating a blog post and your tone is usually laid-back, you could use a “Casual” or “Irreverent” tone. If you’re working on an essay, the “Academic” tone will probably be the most appropriate one.

Step 3. Summarize Your Text

When you’re ready, go ahead and his the summarize button to summarize your text with a single click. As you watch, this AI summary tool will produce a short version of your text, keeping key points but removing extraneous details. This summary is plagiarism-free, as the AI algorithm will rewrite the text in its own words.

Here’s an example summary, based on the introduction to my AI Blogging Guide . It’s summarized 294 words into 120 words:

“AI blogging has become a popular trend among bloggers this year. Many are using AI tools to boost their blogging process, including the author who invites readers to check out their AI blogging process. The author claims that AI tools have helped them increase their blog traffic and suggests that it could be a key to growing a blog faster. They describe AI tools as a cost-effective and efficient assistant, capable of handling tedious tasks and improving content creation speed. The author also discusses the benefits of using AI tools for generating content quickly, optimizing existing blog posts, and coming up with ideas and outlines. They claim that AI tools have helped them create content three times faster than before.”

Tip: Not quite happy with your summary? AI-based technology is far from perfect. You can quickly run the tool again for a fresh summary of your text, potentially changing the tone & writing style if you want a different style of summary.

Bonus: Use My Free Editing and Paraphrasing Checklist Alongside this Text Summarizer

Need some help editing your blog post, article, or essay, or paraphrasing some content? Here’s my checklist to help you.

• After writing your draft, take a break before you start editing
• When editing, begin with big-picture changes (e.g. adding/removing sections)
• Then, think about your stylistic choices—is your tone right for your audience and/or brand?
• Next, turn your attention to details like spelling, grammar, and punctuation
• Watch out for consistency (e.g. decide whether to write “e-commerce” or “eCommerce” and stick to it)
• If you’re quoting directly from someone else’s work, put the quoted content in quotation marks or in blockquote format
• When paraphrasing, put the text in your own words
• Make sure your paraphrase keeps the most important points or the general meaning
• Always acknowledge the original source of your paraphrased or summarized text (naming the author and/or title of the original piece)
• In a blog post or online article, link to the original source where possible

The Features of This Text Summarizer Tool (Summary Generator)

Want to dig further into how the text summarizer tool works? If you’re interested in how it generates the text summary or how to tweak things for different results, here’s what you need to know about how this AI technology functions.

Text (Paste Up to 2,000 Words)

The text summarizer, obviously enough, needs a piece of long text to summarize! It’s up to you to paste in the text you want to use. If the piece is longer than 2,000 words, look at the structure so you can see where best to break it up. Avoid breaking up the original text in the middle of a paragraph or section. And if you wanna unlock the fully featured, unlimited version of this text summarizer tool, head over to RightBlogger .

Tone & Writing Style (Choose an Appropriate Tone)

The text summarizer lets you pick from a wide range of different tones and writing styles. These include Creative, Casual, Excited, Formal, Professional, Empathetic, Persuasive, Sales-oriented, Academic, and more. 

The default tone for the text summarizer will tell readers what the author wrote, as above. But using a different tone can produce a more direct and dynamic summary. Here’s a summary of the start of my AI Blogging Guide again, this time with an “Excited” tone:

“AI blogging is all the rage this year, and for good reason! Bloggers, including myself, are embracing the power of AI tools to supercharge their content creation process. With the help of AI blogging tools like RightBlogger, I’ve seen a huge increase in my traffic and I believe you can too. These tools act as lightning-fast and incredibly hard-working interns, taking care of the tedious tasks so you can focus on the fun parts of creating content. With AI, you can generate content faster, optimize your blog posts for better search engine rankings, and even get help with ideas and outlines. Trust me, AI tools can help you create content three times faster than before, making your blogging process more efficient and enjoyable. Don’t miss out on this game-changing opportunity!”

Tip: You can run the tool as often as you want (it’s free!) so go ahead and experiment with different tones until you find the one that best suits you and your content.

Language (Pick from 25+ Languages)

My free online text summarizer will automatically detect and understand the input language… but it’s up to you to set the output language. By default, this is English (US), but you could also choose English (UK), or a whole range of other languages, including Spanish, French, Polish, Chinese, Portuguese, Indonesian, and more.

Tip: You could use the text summarizer tool for a simple translation of a long piece of content, to preserve the key points. If you wanna unlock more language options, check out RightBlogger for the fully featured version of this online summarizing tool.

The Summarized Text (Keeps Main Points)

The AI’s algorithm will always aim to detect and keep the key points from the text that it’s summarizing. The summary length will depend to some extent on the length of the input text, but you can normally expect the summaries to be around 70–150 words.

If you feel that this summary maker hasn’t quite captured the main message behind your text, go ahead and run it again. You can try it as many times as you like. You might even want to save several different versions then use bits from each of them.

Because the AI comes up with the summary from scratch every time, you can always trust that the summarized text is plagiarism-free.

Text Summarizer FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

Here are some of the most common questions I get about using text summarizer tools.

What is the best way to summarize a text?

If you want to summarize an article, news report, blog post, book chapter, or any other piece of text, you have a couple of choices:

• Create a manual summary
• Use an AI tool like the text summarizer to automatically summarize for you

For a manual summary, you can use some or all of these techniques:

• Write down any subheadings from the text—these are important clues to key points
• Read through the text a couple of times then write down, in your own words, what you think the author is saying
• Highlight key sentences in the text
• Use bullet points to capture the main points of the text
• Rewrite your bullet points or notes into well-structured sentences

If you want, you could use both approaches. Create your own summary, then run the original text through the summarizer tool to see if it comes up with anything you’ve missed.

Can I adjust the summary length?

The text summarizer’s advanced AI will automatically judge the text and come up with the best line and paragraph length for the summary. You may find that you get a longer summary for some tone options than others, as some writing styles are naturally more concise than others.

If you want to rewrite a piece of text but keep it around the same length (instead of shortening it) then the AI paragraph rewriter tool will help you do that.

How can I save or export the summarized text from the online summarizing tool?

You can simply copy the summary from the free summarizing tool and paste it into any other tool of your choice (e.g. Google Docs, Word, WordPress). There isn’t a feature to download the text, but once you’ve copied it, you can save it in any format you want (e.g. doc, docx, txt).

Can I use the online text summarizer when writing a research paper?

The text summarizer is a great way to gain a quick overview of complex articles if you’re researching a topic for an essay or research paper. You could also use the text summarizer to help you put your research into your own words. Make sure that you acknowledge the original source of the ideas, however. Your academic institution should provide you with guidelines for citing sources correctly.

Can I use the summary generator tool for writing a blog post?

The summarizer is a fast and easy way to quickly give an overview of the key points of a blog post. You might do this when creating “hub and spoke” style content, summarizing the posts that you’re linking to. This type of content is great for your blog SEO (search engine optimization).

Will this summarized text pass a plagiarism checker?

The AI summarizer creates a fresh summary for the text using abstractive summarization, rather than using existing sentences from the piece (extractive summarization). This means it rephrases sentences from the original text in order to summarize them, so the summary will be unique—and it should pass a plagiarism check.

However, it’s important to understand that plagiarism isn’t just about exact words. You can also plagiarize an idea by presenting someone else’s idea or information as your own work. That’s why it’s important to acknowledge the original source of the idea (i.e. the author of the long text that you pasted into the summarize tool).

Why did you make this a free tool?

Back when I got started in blogging, I didn’t have a huge budget. In fact, I didn’t have much money to spare at all. I simply couldn’t afford the pricey tools that would have helped me grow my blog. Instead, I made do with free alternatives. I was so grateful to the bloggers and creators who provided those free tools.

Today, it’s my turn to give something back. That’s why the text summarizer is completely free (and always will be). You can use it again and again to summarize articles, news stories, book excerpts, or anything you want. It’s my gift to you.

There are no limits and no strings attached. The only thing I ask is that if you find the text summarizer useful, would you take a look at my huge collection of AI tools, RightBlogger ? It’s designed to help bloggers and content creators grow their online business fast, with AI tools that do pretty much anything you can imagine. We’re adding new tools all the time, inspired by RightBlogger users’ requests.

What other AI tools can I use to help me write better?

I’ve got a TON of free blogging tools (mostly AI-powered) that you can use completely free of charge, and many of those are designed to help you write better content, in natural language.

My writing-focused AI tools include a full article writer to create first drafts in next to no time, an outline generator to help you outline blog posts, an introduction writer , conclusion writer , and even a blog idea generator .

When it comes to editing, my paragraph rewriter (paraphrasing tool) and grammar fixer will help you get your content spot-on. Plus, you can use my meta title generator and meta description generator to optimize your online content.

Who is this text summarizer tool designed for?

When we created the text summarizer, we had a few different groups of people in mind. Primarily, we were thinking about bloggers and content creators: anyone creating online content who might need a helping hand in summarizing their own work or someone else’s article. If you’re an SEO professional, content marketer, or small business owner, the text summarizer is also a great tool for you, helping you create and repurpose content faster than ever before.

The text summarizer is also a good fit for students who need to get through a lot of reading fast, helping to distill key points. It can even help you write essays and academic papers, by paraphrasing text for you. (Just remember to acknowledge the original author of the text.)

Text Summarizer

Summarizing tool powered by AI shortens the long text without altering the main points. Summarize your text, articles, and paragraphs in one click!

• Original Text
• Summarizer Text

How To Summarize An Article?

Insert/paste text.

Paste your content or upload the text file directly from the device.

Select Mode

Choose the Mode from the given options as per your requirements.

Adjust the Length

Make amendments to the summarized text to make it perfect to use.

Save Summarized Text

Download the generated text to your device by downloading, copying/pasting it into your writing project.

Summarize Text With RewriteGuru

Explore some significant reasons for choosing RewriteGuru’s text summarize tool.

AI-Powered Summarization

This text summarizer tool uses advanced technologies powered by AI to summarize text. It scans your content and extracts all the critical points while preserving the context.

Summarize Any Text

You can summarize all sorts of content with this online summarizer. Summarize articles, paragraphs, essays, blog posts, and other documents to boost your content quality.

Explanation & Writing Improvements

Text summarizer can help you explain concepts in a better way without any chance of missing even a single critical point. Moreover, analyzing its output will help you learn how to summarize text, which ultimately aids in improving your overall writing abilities.

Customization Options

The text summarizing tool gives you complete control over the length adjustments. It will summarize text but also share important details like how many words and sentences the summary holds.

Salient Features Of Text Summarizing Tool

Summarizing tool can boost your efficiency and elevate productivity. Here, we mention some exceptional pros of using this online facility.

Free & Accurate

Our text summarizer is a free tool that provides 100% reliable and accurate results. You can summarize articles, paragraphs, blogs & essays without paying a single penny. To check its accuracy, compare the results with any online summarizing tool.

Exceptional Compatibility

The summarize generator supports multiple file formats. You can upload your PDFs and Word files by clicking the Upload button. You can also paste the text directly into the given field of this summarizing tool .

Summarization Modes

This free summarizer offers two different modes to summarize text. Paragraph mode: You get output in a paragraph shape. Bullet mode: Key information will be provided in the form of bullets.

Summarize Unlimited Text

Our summarization tool allows you to summarize as many text files as you desire without observing limitations. Moreover, you don’t need to create an account or share your email address or name while using it.

Instant Unique Output

You can reduce your efforts and get the best quality unique content with the assistance of this free text summarizing tool. The summarize tool quickly shortens lengthy articles or paragraphs with one click. Also, you can verify the genuineness of the content with any online plagiarism checker .

AI Summarizer to Change the Game

AI summarizer has the potential to generate unique and relevant summaries as it uses AI-based technologies to summarize text. Look at how this text summarizer can help:

Article Summarizer

Our free article summarizer can scan through a large volume of articles quickly. It analyzes the structure, extracts vital ideas, and concisely presents the information. This text summarize generator captures the essence of what the article is about while maintaining the overall context of the article.

Sentence Summarizer

Our sentence summarizer can consolidate convoluted phrases into a shorter form. The sentence summarize tool will help you better understand complicated texts and grasp the essential elements faster.

Paragraph Summarizer

Worried about how to summarize a paragraph short? Our paragraph summarizer tool proves helpful when dealing with lengthy or complicated paragraphs.

Essay Summarizer

Our essay summarizer performs a comprehensive analysis of essays and grasps the main ideas. With this summarize essay tool, you can assess the overall context of the essay without going through the entire text.

Paper Summarizer

Our AI paper summarizer can be helpful when summarizing academic publications. The tool effectively extracts relevant information, highlighting extensive research papers' main conclusions, methods, and findings.

Book Summarizer

Our AI book summarizer can save time by providing precise and concise summaries. The summarize tool covers all the primary points of the book and presents the core idea.

Story Summarizer

Our story summarizer examines the structure and identifies condensed fictional and non-fictional stories' key events, characters, and themes. It helps to generate a summary that captures the actual image of the provided story. 

Word Summarizer

Our word summarizer cuts through the clutter and extracts the juiciest bits in a few seconds. It provides the key points neatly condensed for your busy brain.

Users Of Rewrite Guru’s Summarizer Tool

The text summarizing tool by RewriteGuru assists individuals from almost all significant professions and domains of life. Below are some primary beneficiaries:

By using this summarize tool free, webmasters do not need to worry about the accuracy and flawlessness of their website content. This utility will undoubtedly assist them in managing their efforts and protect the website from any search engine penalty.

This online text summarizer helps students to craft quality assignments and get good grades. It reduces their writing efforts and enables them to extract key points from any article, book, chapter, or research paper shared by their teacher or on the web. This free summarizing tool allows them to complete the assignment in time.

This AI text summarizer allows professionals to shorten business meeting transcripts into brief bullet points. It summarizes reports, emails, and other official documents, which helps in easy decision-making.

With this summarising tool's help, researchers and writers can avoid the hassle of reading the entire article and get familiar with the core idea of any paper in a few seconds. Moreover, the assistance of an online paraphrasing tool can also be taken to renew the old published content.

What is summarizing in writing?

Text summarization is the process of pressing a lengthy text into a short form that can be easy to understand.

Is It Safe to Use This Online Summarize Tool?

Yes! Our AI Text summarizer is the safest option to generate a summary online. All your submitted text will automatically be erased from its servers once you get the summarized text.

Will the text summarizer damage the actual context?

No! The text summarizing tool by RewriteGuru can handle all types of content without altering the original context. You can summarize paragraphs, articles, papers, essays, stories, and emails with the same meaning as they genuinely have.

Does this AI summarizer improve the content structure?

Yes, This text summarizer allows you to create a better content structure and emphasize its main points.

Can this PDF summarizer Handle Multilingual Content?

Yes! Our text summarizer tool supports all major languages. Besides English, it works with Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Chinese and other major languages.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Cask of Amontillado — A Summary of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”

A Summary of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado"

• Categories: The Cask of Amontillado

About this sample

Words: 512 |

Published: Jun 13, 2024

Words: 512 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, body paragraph.

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