Summary Writing
Summary writing is the process of shortening a long text by only highlighting the main ideas and information of the text. The summary of a long text or a book gives the reader an idea of what information is there in that long text or book. Every book has a small paragraph written on its back, which is the summary of the book, providing an idea of the contents of the book. Similarly, a summary is used in many places, including a person's work-life as well. Here, we will discuss how to write a summary in detail.
Summarizing a Story!
A summary is considered as a brief write-up that is used for summing up the whole story in one short paragraph. This short paragraph will contain all the main ideas and essential information about the story. This paragraph is used to give a quick overview of the story or its gist. The summary is responsible for informing the reader about the main points and the actual theme of the story. By going through this write-up you will learn how to make a summary of a given story.
The only objective of the summary is to save some valuable time for the reader by giving him an instant short overview of what the whole story is all about. Despite being the shorter version of the story, the summary will contain all the main ideas that will help a reader understand what exactly is the story about.
How to Write a Summary?
Before attempting to write a summary, a student must have a basic understanding of it. Without any knowledge, a student is incapable of creating a good summary that can give a good overview. Summary writing seems easy, but it is not until you have understood all the rules and regulations of writing a summary, that you can write one. To write a summary you must follow the following predetermined steps.
Read the Assigned Text or Story Carefully
The best way to summarize a larger text or a story precisely is by understanding the text of the story properly. For understanding a story correctly, a person has to read that piece properly with full focus and sincerity. The reader must read the piece thoroughly without skipping anything. The reader might need more than one reading to be thorough on the piece assigned.
Make Notes of Important Points
After reading the whole piece, the next step is to jot down the main points of the larger text or the story for future reference. This is a crucial step in summarizing as the reader has to identify the points which are important enough to be jotted down. Jotting down points that are not important can affect the quality of the summary, and it is not necessary also as we are not giving a detailed overview through a summary.
Begin Writing Using Your Memory
After jotting down the main points, the next step is to elaborate and expand those points. At this stage, it is suggested that students should elaborate on the points using their memory that they have gained while reading the piece. This will ensure that students will use their own words in the summary despite reading the words that are there in the original piece, which are written by the author. Go through some summary writing examples for Class 10 to get a better insight into it.
Avoid Giving Personal Opinions
While summarizing a text or a story, one must avoid using his or her personal opinions in.The summary must contain all the facts and figures that are in the assigned text or the story. There should not be any alterations in the writings of the author. One should not interpret the work and add his or her reviews in the summary since he or she is not the critique for that work. One must simply summarize it without any changes.
Review
The last step is to review and evaluate the summary that has been written to identify the mistakes and rectify them to make the summary appropriate. The summary must be reviewed thoroughly before submitting it. While doing the final edit of the summary, there are some points to keep in mind which are as follows.
If the assigned piece is a story, then one must ensure that the summary is written following the correct chronological order of the facts as given in the story.
One must ensure that a particular point is not repeated twice. Any repeated information must get deleted during the review.
The length of the summary must be short. A long summary defies the purpose of the summary.
Check for grammatical errors.
Summary Writing Format
The following summary format should be followed while summary writing in English.
The introductory part
A view on the main points of the story or text
A conclusion on the whole part
Difference Between Summary and Precis?
A summary is a concise statement or repeat of key themes, usually at the end of work: a chapter summary.
Precis writing is a summary or essence of a long section that is designed to cover all of the text's intricacies and key characteristics while using the fewest words possible.
The Difference Between the Two is Mentioned Below:
Conclusion
If you wish to have more knowledge on how to go about Summary writing, you can follow Vedantu and ace the summary game.
FAQs on Summary
1. How to write a summary of a story?
To write an English story summary, one has to first read the assigned story thoroughly to understand the main ideas and information that the story has. Thorough knowledge of the story can help to create an efficient summary. After reading the story, one needs to jot down the important points and main ideas of the story for future reference. After jotting down the points, one can start writing the summary referring to these points. Personal opinions should not be included in the summary, and the message of the author should not get altered or changed.
2. Why learning summary writing is important for a student's career?
Students need a strong grammatical base to be successful in their career. Summarizing is one of the most effective ways to strengthen the grammatical base of a student. Through summarizing students can learn the various uses of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives and can also learn how to interchange words by using synonyms without changing the meaning of the sentence. Hence, they enhance their focusing skills as they extract the main points from the assigned text to be summarized.
3. How to download the Vedantu explanation of how to write a summary from the website in PDF format?
The explanation on how to write different types of summaries can be downloaded from the Vedantu website. The Essay is accessible in PDF format for all students on Vedantu's official website and may be downloaded for free. Students should download the Vedantu website's Essay on writing summaries to understand what is required to write a good summary. Vedantu Essays are written in basic English, which is easy to comprehend. Following the Vedantu essays ensures that students are adequately prepared for any subject and that they will receive high grades.
4. Why is learning how to write a summary helpful for students?
Vedantu's explanation of how to write a summary is both exemplary and well-structured. The explanation provided is in simple and lucid language. They are available for free on the Vedantu website. The explanation is written by qualified lecturers and experts in the English language. It enables students to understand the basics of how to write a summary while ensuring that students score well in their examinations. Students are urged to practise writing many summaries in order to pass the test; only after they have had enough practice can they be fully prepared to write the actual exam.
5. How does summary help students with revision?
A summary is essentially a summed up version of the original information. It is generally reinterpreted by students in their own words in order for them to grasp the concepts more readily. Students can recollect all of the major topics and concepts linked to such topics just by looking at the notes. It will also help them save time while making last-minute preparations. Summarizing also teaches students how to recognise the most significant concepts in a book, how to filter out unnecessary material, and how to connect the core ideas in a meaningful way. Considering all these factors, Vedantu strives at providing you with the best alternatives to refer from.
6. List out some of the do’s and don’t of summary writing?
Do’s for Summary Writing:
To make the summary easier to read, start with the passage's main concept.
Give a clear understanding of what they're about to read.
Make a list of all the significant aspects as you read the paragraph, highlight it with a pen and incorporate them in the summary.
Follow the passage's primary concept with the facts, points, methods, etc. given in the passage.
Include all of the significant terminology and keywords from the paragraph, while explaining it in your own words.
Keep note of the tenses you use in the summary. Data on previous historical events must only be described in the past tense.
There must be a link between the data you're putting in the precis and the information you're providing. There should be some cross-references.
Don’ts for Summary Writing:
The length of the summary must be less than the passage's length.
Use simple vocabulary and avoid overcomplicating the description.
Make no assumptions or add information to the precis based on your own whims.
Do not add your own commentary or criticism to the understanding.
Abbreviations should be avoided.
Do not write assertions in the question format.
Don't concentrate on any one particular topic for too long.
For more such information, look up Vedantu’s website.