Summary writing

A summary is a short survey of the information from a longer text. This means that you must aim at being very economical in your use of words. You must never add to the information from the text. So never add any ideas or opinions or examples of your own. Your summary should be a short objective survey of the whole text. For texts of up to about a thousand words the summary should be about 1/4 of this length. For much longer texts you should limit the length of a summary to about 450 words in all.

It is important to pay attention to the style in which the summary is written. It should be a continuous piece of writing with a logical development. Keep closely to the same order of ideas as in the original text. Do not list things but process the items mentioned in the original in complete sentences. The style of writing should be rather formal. This means no use of weak (shortened) forms such as: I'm, you're, can't, won't etc. The ideas should be carefully linked together in clear meaningful sentences using familiar words

POINTS TO REMEMBER

Here follow rules for writing a meaningful summary successfully:

1. Read the text carefully. Discover what the main theme of the text is.
2. Note down keywords from each paragraph. From these discover the structure of the text.
3. Write dear complete and economical sentences using your OWN WORDS except for specialist words.
4. Link ideas logically together in a piece of formal writing without lists and weak (shortened) forms of words.
5. Read the summary through. It must be understood independently, without referring back to the original text. Take out ,lazy' words with no real meaning.
6. Check whether it is objective. There must be no opinions of your own and no opinions left out - even if you do not agree with them yourself!
7. Check your spelling and the sentence construction.
8. Give information about the source of the original material, original title, author, date of publication.

An example summary

Read the following summary made from a sample text on an offshore oil platform (oil rig).

Here are the keywords or ideas which can be found in the text. Note that these are mainly nominal groups (nouns) for these give a better concept of ideas than verbal groups do.

Offshore industries - new technologies.

One development - one-legged structure.

Contract, single tower for deep water.

Limited weight, gravity structure.

Key = joint of steel.

Submerged in lubricating oil, measures to prevent corrosion.

Moving parts overlaid alloy by welding.

Proved in mooring buoys + articulated platform.

Here follows a short summary of the text based on the key ideas above. The original text is about 460 words. A summary should therefore consist of 110-120 words.

STANDING ON ONE LEG - OFFSHORE

Offshore industries have led to new technologies. One development is a one-legged structure which was the result of a contract for a single tower drilling platform for use in deep water. The movable single leg has limited weight and can be kept in place by buoyancy tanks under the water surface and weighted with ballast on the sea bed for gravity force. The main part is the joint of steel which is protected by lubricating oil. To prevent corrosion during its life-span the moving parts are overlaid with alloy by welding techniques. This method has been tested at mooring points on the sea bed and on an articulated platform.

(111 words)