Summarizing in Academic Writing
Summarizing, like paraphrasing of including other writers’ ideas in your own work by
rewriting the original so that it's in your own words. You can use summarizing
when you don’t need to provide the same amount of detail as in the original
text. A summary is shorter than a paraphrase, as it only contains the main
points from the original and leaves out most of the details. Keep the main
points, but leave out the rest of the information from the original.
A summary should be cited in the text where you use it and the
full reference should
be included in the reference section.
When writing your summary you should make sure that it conveys the
same information as the original did and has the same meaning. The balance of
ideas should be the same in both.
Your summary should also fit in with the rest of your writing;
especially the style and grammar should be the same.
Example of a Summary
Using the passage from ‘The Origin of Species’ 6th Ed. by Charles
Darwin, below:
- It
is, no doubt, extremely difficult even to conjecture by what gradations
many structures have been perfected, more especially among broken and
failing groups of organic beings, which have suffered much extinction; but
we see so many strange gradations in nature, that we ought to be extremely
cautious in saying that any organ or instinct, or any whole structure,
could not have arrived at its present state by many graduated steps. There
are, it must be admitted, cases of special difficulty opposed to the
theory of natural selection; and one of the most curious of these is the
existence in the same community of two or three defined castes of workers
or sterile female ants; but I have attempted to show how these
difficulties can be mastered. Darwin, C (1872), On the Origin of Species,
6th Ed.
A summary of the passage would be:
- It is
difficult to fully understand the small changes that led to the evolution
of all the different structures in nature. There are some especially
difficult cases, but these can also be explained (Darwin, 1872).
Here the summary is significantly shorter than the original, about
a quarter of the length. The details have been removed but the two main points
from the original have been kept. The language used has been changed and there
is a citation at the end to attribute it to the original author.
Paraphrasing in Academic Writing
Paraphrasing is one of the three ways (also quoting and summarizing) to include another authors’ ideas in your own writing.
In paraphrasing, the original passage is rewritten in your own
words. The rewritten passage should contain most of the information from the
original passage. It should maintain the meaning of the original but change the
words and language which are used to convey the information.
When you include a rewrite of an original passage the original
must be cited in the text and the full reference added to the reference section.
Paraphrasing is better than quoting as you've to change the
original. This means that you'll gain a greater understanding of the original
as you've to read it in enough detail to be able to rewrite it. When rewriting
the original you should keep any specialized terms (electron, DNA, protein),
proper nouns (names of people, places or organizations), numbers and formula,
the same.
The rest of the words should be changed so that they match the
style of your own writing. This'll often mean changing the grammar of the
original and you might need to use subordinate and adverbial or participle
phrases when reducing the overall number of sentences.
A paraphrase will normally be slightly shorter than the original
but not by a lot as you're keeping most of the same information.
Example of a Paraphrase
Using the original passage, from ‘The Origin of Species’ 6th Ed.
by Charles Darwin, below:
- It
is, no doubt, extremely difficult even to conjecture by what gradations
many structures have been perfected, more especially among broken and
failing groups of organic beings, which have suffered much extinction; but
we see so many strange gradations in nature, that we ought to be extremely
cautious in saying that any organ or instinct, or any whole structure,
could not have arrived at its present state by many graduated steps. There
are, it must be admitted, cases of special difficulty opposed to the theory
of natural selection; and one of the most curious of these is the
existence in the same community of two or three defined castes of workers
or sterile female ants; but I have attempted to show how these
difficulties can be mastered. Darwin, C (1872), On the Origin of Species,
6th Ed.
A correctly paraphrased version could be:
- It
is, understandably, difficult to comprehend the small changes to
structures which have perfected them, especially when so many species with
them have still gone extinct. But there are so many different small
changes visible in nature that we should be careful when saying it is
impossible for a structure not to have arisen from evolutionary processes.
However one of the most difficult things to explain with the theory of
natural selection is the evolution of social insects, such as ants; but,
even for these, explanations have been suggested (Darwin, 1872).
Here the passage contains most of the same information; it is
stated in different language except for technical terms (such as ‘the theory of
natural selection’) which need to be kept the same. The passage is slightly
shorter and the citation has been included at the end, as part of the last
sentence.
An incorrect version, a plagiarised version could be:
- It is
extremely difficult to conjecture by what graduations many structures
could have been perfected, even in the failed and broken groups of natural
beings, but we see many strange changes in nature. So we should not say
that any organ or instinct, or structure, could not have become to its
present state. There are difficult cases where natural selection might not
be the right explanation with the most curious of these being the
existence in the same community of two or three defined castes of workers
or sterile female ants.
In the incorrect version most of the words have been copied from
the original, with only a few words changed. Also the final part about ants has
been changed so that it now reads that they might not be due to natural
selection where in the original Darwin said they were difficult to explain by
natural selection but he had still tried. Also there's no citation at the end
of the passage.
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