English 101

Lecture Notes 4

Spring 2022

7 Feb

Lecture 4

1. Summary

A. summary is a restatement in your own words of the

main ideas of another person’s text.

B. Summaries typically focus on main ideas over

details.

C. This may mean examples and anecdotes are not

included in a summary, although you will have to decide

this on a case-by-case basis.

D. Summary is related to -- but not the same as --

paraphrase.
E. Both summary and paraphrase involve restating a text

in your own words.

F. But whereas paraphrase attempts to restate

everything in the original text, summary focuses on

main ideas and does not attempt to restate everything

from the original text.

G. As a very rough guide, you might consider that for

shorter texts a summary could be about one third the

length of the original text.

H. However, this guideline will break down as the

original text gets longer. A 200-page book might be

summarized adequately in a few pages. As with much of

writing, you’ll have to make authorial decisions about

this on a case-by-case basis.