How to Write a Summary | Guide &

Examples
Published on November 23, 2020 by Shona McCombes. Revised on May 31, 2023.

Summarizing, or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main

points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.

There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:

1. Read the text

2. Break it down into sections
3. Identify the key points in each section
4. Write the summary
5. Check the summary against the article

Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or evaluating the source. You should simply
provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying
any text from the original).

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When to write a summary

There are many situations in which you might have to summarize an article or other source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material

• To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
• To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

When you’re writing an academic text like an essay, research paper, or dissertation,
you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your
point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.
But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant
to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyze or critique
it.

In any case, the goal of summarizing is to give your reader a clear understanding of the
original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

Step 1: Read the text

You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it.
It’s often effective to read in three stages:

1. Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
2. Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you
read.
3. Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any
particularly important or difficult passages.

There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:

• Start by reading the abstract. This already contains the author’s own summary of
their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
• Pay attention to headings and subheadings. These should give you a good sense of
what each part is about.
• Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did
the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?

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Step 2: Break the text down into sections
To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into
smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably
already organized into clearly marked sections, usually including
an introduction, methods, results, and discussion.

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and
essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Tip: To see at a glance what each part of the text focuses on, try writing a word or phrase
in the margin next to each paragraph that describes the paragraph’s content. If several
paragraphs cover similar topics, you may group them together.
Step 3: Identify the key points in each section
Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does
your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the
article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be
considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in
each part.

Key points of a scientific article

Introduction • What research question or problem was addressed?

• Are any hypotheses formulated?

Methods • What type of research was done?

• How were data collected and analyzed?

Results • What were the most important findings?

• Were the hypotheses supported?

Discussion/conclusion • What is the overall answer to the research question?

• How does the author explain these results?
• What are the implications of the results?
• Are there any important limitations?
• Are there any key recommendations?

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what
points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement—the central claim that the
author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic
sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

Step 4: Write the summary

Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put
them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to
properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even
just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of
the author’s key points.
Examples of article summaries
Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarize this article, which scientifically
investigates the old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

Example of a full article summary

Davis et al. (2015) set out to empirically test the popular saying “an apple a day keeps the
doctor away.” Apples are often used to represent a healthy lifestyle, and research has shown
their nutritional properties could be beneficial for various aspects of health. The authors’
unique approach is to take the saying literally and ask: do people who eat apples use
healthcare services less frequently? If there is indeed such a relationship, they suggest,
promoting apple consumption could help reduce healthcare costs.

The study used publicly available cross-sectional data from the National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey. Participants were categorized as either apple eaters or non-
apple eaters based on their self-reported apple consumption in an average 24-hour period.
They were also categorized as either avoiding or not avoiding the use of healthcare services
in the past year. The data was statistically analyzed to test whether there was an association
between apple consumption and several dependent variables: physician visits, hospital
stays, use of mental health services, and use of prescription medication.

Although apple eaters were slightly more likely to have avoided physician visits, this
relationship was not statistically significant after adjusting for various relevant factors. No
association was found between apple consumption and hospital stays or mental health
service use. However, apple eaters were found to be slightly more likely to have avoided
using prescription medication. Based on these results, the authors conclude that an apple a
day does not keep the doctor away, but it may keep the pharmacist away. They suggest that
this finding could have implications for reducing healthcare costs, considering the high
annual costs of prescription medication and the inexpensiveness of apples.

However, the authors also note several limitations of the study: most importantly, that apple
eaters are likely to differ from non-apple eaters in ways that may have confounded the
results (for example, apple eaters may be more likely to be health-conscious). To establish
any causal relationship between apple consumption and avoidance of medication, they
recommend experimental research.
Click to expand
An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary
assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an
article.

For example, in a literature review or meta analysis you may want to briefly summarize this
study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our
summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Example of a concise article summary

Using national survey data, Davis et al. (2015) tested the assertion that “an apple a day
keeps the doctor away” and did not find statistically significant evidence to support this
hypothesis. While people who consumed apples were slightly less likely to use prescription
medications, the study was unable to demonstrate a causal relationship between these
variables.
Need some help writing your summary? Try our free text summarizer

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the
source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style, but it usually
includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation
generators.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

Step 5: Check the summary against the article

Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

• You’ve accurately represented the author’s work

• You haven’t missed any essential information
• The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarizing many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use
a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly
cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.