The purpose of a summary is to give the reader a clear, objective picture of the original text. Most importantly, the summary restates only the main points of a text or a lecture without giving examples or details, such as dates, numbers or statistics.

Guidelines for writing a summary of an article:• State the main ideas of the article.• Identify the most important details that support the main ideas.• Write your summary in your own words; avoid copying phrases and sentences from the article unless they’re direct quotations.• Express the underlying meaning of the article, not just the superficial details.• Your summary should be about one third of the length of the original article.Your summary should include:

Introduction• Start with a summary or overview of the article which includes the author’s name and the title of the article.• Finish with a thesis statement that states the main idea of the article.Body Paragraphs• The number of paragraphs in your summary depends on the length of the original article.• Your summary should be about one third the length of the original article. For a one-paragraph summary, discuss each supporting point in a separate sentence. Give 1-2 explanations for each supporting point. For a multi-paragraph summary, discuss each supporting point in a separate paragraph.• Start each body paragraph with a topic sentence.• Each paragraph focuses on a separate main idea and just the most important details from the article.• Put the ideas from the essay into your own words. Avoid copying phrases and sentences from the article.• Use transitional words and phrases to connect ideas.

Concluding Paragraph• Summarize the main idea and the underlying meaning of the article.