TRANSACTIONAL WRITING: Summarising/Precis Writing
Summarising is a life skill
It teaches you to be brief and to get straight to the point. The exercise of summarising forces you to analyse and simplify your material. Summary writing goes hand in hand with analytical skills and with practice, both techniques will benefit. The ability to summarise will aid you in your studies and in your career.
A summary is a simplified, condensed account. You will be required to reduce a given extract to a certain number of words.
- Only main points are required.
- Eliminate unnecessary information such as repetition, explanations, descriptions and quotations.
- By using your own words, you will indicate that you understand the passage.
- This is a reported statement and is therefore written in the past tense and in reported speech.
Techniques for Summarising
- Read the passage carefully in order to gain a general overview of the content.
- Reread the passage and underline the key sentence in each paragraph. This is often the first sentence of the paragraph and what follows merely substantiates it.
- List these main points. You may prefer to use your own words, but keep the context intact.
- Write the first draft of the summary by combining these ideas in a logical sequence.
Image credit - Reread the draft and remove any unnecessary words or information e.g. adjectives and adverbs.
- Count the words.
- Add or omit words or phrases in order to produce a succinct and condensed version of the original.
- Edit your summary for spelling or grammatical errors.
- Supply a short title if necessary.
Image credit - Rewrite your final draft carefully, checking that you have used your own words.
- State the number of words in a bracket just below your summary.
Source: EBH Joubert. English Grammar in Writing
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