13.5.2 Summarizing

Summaries allow you to describe general ideas from a source. You do not express detailed information as you would with a paraphrase. If you are unsure whether you are summarizing or paraphrasing, compare your writing to the original.

If you can locate a specific point in the original text, then you are constructing a paraphrase and should include the appropriate page number or other marker. If your writing is focused on a larger idea or argument that your source discusses throughout, then you have a summary. Therefore, there is no need to cite a specific page number, although you will, of course, attribute the summary to the source from which you are drawing it.

Like paraphrases, any summaries of the text should not include direct wording from the original source. All text should be in your own words, though the ideas are those of the original author. You should indicate the original source by using a signal phrase that identifies the author of the original text, or the title of the text if no author is available.

This section is derived from Using Sources in Your Document in Howdy or Hello? Technical and Professional Communication Copyright © 2022 by Matt McKinney, Kalani Pattison, Sarah LeMire, Kathy Anders, and Nicole Hagstrom-Schmidt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.