Paragraph
Summary Cheat Sheet
ACCURACY
· No editorializing! No opinion!
BREVITY
· No minor details
COMPLETENESS
· Include all major ideas
USE YOUR OWN WORDS
· No word theft, unless unavoidable
USE LOGICAL ORDER
· Try to mimic the order and proportions of the original
CLARITY
· Not so general that it becomes meaningless
CREDIT TO THE AUTHOR
· Include publication information: name, title, date, page, publication…
Never include your own opinion! Your job is to shrink the original, not to add anything.
If an article is well-written, it will have a thesis statement and topic sentences in each paragraph. Scan for these to help you find the main points.
Rules for summarizing
Write the introductory sentence, which you will put as the 1st sentence of your summary.
This MUST include:
Reference information (author’s name, name of the article, name of the publication, date, page)
A thesis or general idea statement
Sample Introductory Statements
In her 2009 TED talk The Danger of A Single Story, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains that knowing only one story about a group of people leads to stereotyping.
In his essay, “Harmony”, from his book One Story One Song, Richard Wagamese says that to bring harmony back to our lives we need to find a balance with nature.