Writing Skills: Summarising

Summarising means selecting and paraphrasing all

Summarising means selecting and paraphrasing all the important information in the original text so that the main ideas remain clear in a shorter form.

Summarising follows the same basic steps

Summarising follows the same basic steps as note-making, but it does not stop at brief points. It turns those points into full connected sentences.

Only the central points of

Only the central points of the passage are kept. Examples, explanations, and repetition are left out unless they are necessary for meaning.

Ideas in a summary are linked

Ideas in a summary are linked with suitable connectors, so the writing reads smoothly and logically.

A longer idea can often be

A longer idea can often be replaced by a single precise word or a short expression, such as using 'precocious' for a child who shows intelligence far