GUIDELINES FOR WRITING A SUMMARY OF A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

A "summary" is the author's ideas in your words (no more than 10-20 sentences). Common
errors that students make when they write a summary are: a) including their ideas and
thoughts about the topic; b) copying sentences from the article and making no changes to
them or only very small changes; c) summarizing well different sections of the article, but
give no overall sense of what the whole article is about.

A good summary gives an objective outline of the whole piece of writing, the overall
covering the entire article, saying what the author's main idea is as well as important sub-
ideas in the article. It should answer basic questions such as “Who did what, where, and
when?" Do not give your own ideas or criticisms as part of the summary.

The plan for summarizing a newspaper article is the following:

 the headline of the article;

 the author of the article;
 the article is taken from the newspaper...
 state the central idea of the article
 give a summary of the article stating the main problems discussed in the article;
 speak on the conclusion the author comes to.

You may use the following expressions summarizing an article:

The headline of the article is....

The headline of the article I've read is....

The article is headlined...

The author of the article is...

It was published in...

The article deals with... / is about ....

The subject of the article is...

The central/main idea of the article is about.../ can be worded in the following way...

The article is devoted to...

The article touches upon...

The purpose of the article is to give the reader some information on... / provide a reader with
some information on...

The author starts by telling the reader about...

At the beginning of the article the author describes...

The article (the author) begins with a (the) description of...

According to the text/article/author...

The author stresses..../ The author says that....

Further the author reports that...

The article expresses (doesn't express) the author's opinion; it just states the facts....

I want to single out the key points on which the article is based.....

Then (after that, further on, next) the author goes on to say that / gives a detailed (thorough)
analysis (description)...

In conclusion, the author.../ the author draws the conclusion that

The article ends with... / concludes...

*If the original uses "I" replace this with the writer's actual surname, “the writer", or “s/he".
If the original uses “you", substitute "people" or "they"