Summarising

Summarising is writing a summary of what the author says. Summarising is useful because:

• you can miss out unnecessary details, such as examples
• you can use less words than the author, and therefore reduce the number of words in your writing and the number of words that your reader should read

A summary should have about 50% or less words than the words that you are summarising.

A summary should have both an in-text citation and a reference in the bibliography.

Try the Reference Machine: it automatically makes summary references for you.
Click here for examples and an exercise on in-text citation.

Links:

• Choosing whether to use a quotation, summary or paraphrase.
• Example academic essay with the quotations, summaries and paraphrases highlighted. It also contains in-text citations and references. The topic is how to design navigation for Internet pages.

hits since 30 May 2006

Last updated: Tuesday, 30 May 2006

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