Writing a Précis

A summary is a short version of a longer piece of writing. It uses your own words to share only the most important ideas. Here is how to write a good one.

First, read the whole text. As you read, mark the parts that seem important or surprising. Skip the small details that just add colour.

Next, find the main idea. Ask yourself: what is this text mostly about? What is the one big point the writer wants me to know? Write that down in one sentence.

Then, pick the key details that support the main idea. Usually two or three are enough. Leave out examples, repeated ideas, and anything that is nice to know but not needed.

Now write your summary in your own words. Start with the main idea, then add the key details. Keep it much shorter than the original. If the text had ten paragraphs, your summary might have just one.

Finally, check your work. Did you keep the important meaning? Did you leave out your own opinions? A summary tells what the writer said, not what you think about it.

A sentence can follow every grammar rule and still be too long and hard to follow. Reducing a sentence means taking out words that are not needed, or splitting one crowded sentence into two.

Every word in a sentence should do a job. If a word only repeats what another word already said, it can go. If a phrase adds nothing new, it can go too.

Try this: read your sentence aloud. If you run out of breath or lose the point halfway, the sentence is carrying too much. Find the extra words and cut them.

Watch out for two traps. Too many long sentences feel heavy. But too many short sentences feel choppy and boring. Good writers mix them up.

Wordiness means using more words than you need. Redundancy means saying the same thing twice. Both make writing fuzzy and boring to read.

Look for pairs of words that repeat each other. Saying past history is wordy, because all history is in the past. Saying each and every is redundant, because one of those words is enough.

Look for filler phrases too. In the event that can shrink to if. Due to the fact that can shrink to because. Small swaps like these make your writing tighter and clearer.

Here is the test to use on every sentence: does each word help the reader understand? If a word does no work, thank it and let it go. When you cut the extra words, your main ideas shine through.

Summarizing as you read means pausing now and then to restate what you just read, in your own words. You focus on the main ideas and the most important details, and you skip the rest.

If you are not sure what the main ideas are, try the 5Ws and H questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Answering even a few of these points you straight at the heart of the text.

How often should you pause? For a short text, summarize after every paragraph. For a longer text, pause after each big chunk. Pick the rhythm that works for you.

You can summarize silently in your head, but saying it out loud or jotting it down works even better. A quick summary after each section builds a map of the whole text, and that makes writing a short version of it at the end feel easy.

An abstract is a tiny summary of a big piece of writing. Scientists write abstracts so readers can learn the main points fast without reading the whole article. You can use the same skill any time you need to shrink a long text.

First, read the whole text at least twice. The first read gives you the big picture. The second read lets you spot the goal, the method, the results, and the conclusion. Those four things are the skeleton of almost every summary.

Next, write one short sentence for each main point. Keep only what the text truly needs. A number, a name, or a date only stays if the meaning would break without it.

Then check the length. Many abstracts must stay under a strict word limit. If yours is too long, cut examples first, then repeated ideas, then extra describing words.

Finally, read your abstract on its own. A stranger should understand the main message without opening the original.