Summaries

How to write a good summary

A summary is quite simply a shorter version of another text, containing only the most important information. The ability to write a good summary is a very useful skill. It shows that you are able to understand a particular text well enough to be able to identify the main ideas and rewrite it in a condensed form in your own words. For this reason summary writing is often used as an examination task.

You may think that this is an outdated skill. After all, you could easily use an AI tool such as ChatGPT to write a summary for you. But if you don't know how to write a good summary, or understand what constitutes a good summary, then how could you evaluate one produced by AI or by another person? There may be good reasons for using AI to write summaries and we'll examine how to do that later See the AI Summaries Page. But first you need to be able to summarise a text with the best tool at your disposal, which is your own mind. Only then will you be able to properly evaluate any summary, however it is produced.

How to write a summary

It's not enough just to cross out any unnecessary words or sentences to shorten a text. We need to extract the most important information and rewrite it (mainly) in our own words. The key steps in writing a summary are:

  1. Read through the text to identify the main point of the text. The title and any headings often give you a good idea about the main idea of the text. If there are no headings or title, look for a topic sentence and or thesis statement in the first paragraph. Read ONLY the text; not a summary written by anyone else or by an AI summarizer. If you do, you will be influenced by that summary, which may not be a good one.
  2. Read through the whole text again and note down all the important points, usually only one point for each paragraph. Are you still sure about the main point of the whole text?
  3. You should normally follow the order of the main points as they are ordered in the text but it's a good idea to assign each point an index of importance. You may decide later to discard a low priority item.
  4. Using your notes about the main points, write your summary. Don't include any unnecessary details such are examples or other supporting information.
  5. If you have been given a word limit for your summary, check that your summary is not too long. If it is, cut out any unnecessary details (see what not to include below) and any low priority items.
  6. Proofread your summary and check that the text is coherent (not just a list of unconnected sentences). Add any necessary transition adverbials.

What not to include:

  1. You don't need quotes or citations.
  2. You don't normally need supporting details.
  3. You don't normally need examples (but see below).
  4. You must not include anything which is not in the original text, especially your comments, analysis, critique, or opinions.

Example Summary

The following text is from The Conversation. It is entitled "Curious Kids: Why do people with synaesthesia link senses, and how does it work?" (Simner 2021). You should click on the link above to view the original article before you read the comments below.

Text
Comments
Curious Kids: Why do people with synaesthesia link senses, and how does it work?
Look around you – what does the world feel like? Some of it – like the colours – feels like it’s coming in through your eyes. You can’t hear the colours, or smell them, right? You can see them. Eyes are for seeing, ears are for hearing sounds, noses and mouths are for smelling and tasting, and your fingertips are for touching. But what would happen if you could hear with your eyes? Or see with your ears? This is what it means to have synaesthesia (pronounced sinna-STEE-zia).
The title gives us some important information; the fact that people with synaesthesia "link senses". This is repeated in the second paragraph so this is obviously important and we need to include this information in the summary. The first paragraph is mainly simple background information. Only the last three sentences tell us something about synaesthesia. So perhaps we could use these to provide a definition.
What is synaesthesia?
Synaesthesia is a long word with a hard spelling that even adults get wrong. (It doesn’t help that it’s often spelled slightly differently, “synesthesia”, in the US.) It’s a word that describes a special way of sensing the world – a merging or a linking of the senses. There are lots of different ways to have synaesthesia. Some people can see colours when they hear music. Other people can taste flavours in their mouth when they read words. And others can hear sounds when they look at bright colours, or watch silent, moving objects. We think there are over 100 ways of experiencing it, but only a small number of people in the world who do.
The heading for this paragraph tells us that we can expect a definition. So we can combine the last part of paragraph one with the definition given here ( a special way of sensing the world – a merging or a linking of the senses ). The second part of this paragraph tells us about the different ways people experience synaesthesia and how common it is. You might decide that this counts as secondary information or an example and therefore not include it. It may depend on how short your summary needs to be.
How can you hear a colour?
You might think your senses are separate from one another, that colours can only be seen by your eyes or sounds only be heard by your ears. But in fact, the brain is actually the big boss of everything. It’s the only one doing the seeing, the hearing, the tasting, and so on. When you see a red rose, the colour is just the rose bouncing a certain part of the sun’s light into your eyes. This in turn makes your eyes send an electrical signal to your brain, much like a current down an electrical wire. The actual feeling of redness only happens once that signal reaches a special part of your brain, called the occipital cortex. This is the part of your brain that sees. When it receives a signal from the eyes, it kind of springs into action (neuroscientists say it “activates”), and this is when you feel the colour red. So redness is not something on the rose, but something in your brain. It is a feeling that happens when you activate a specific part of your brain. And the same is true for other feelings: coldness or loudness or prickliness all have their own brain activations too.
The heading tells us that we can expect an explanation of how some people can hear a colour, so we need to identify that. In fact we only get part of the explanation in this paragraph - that it is the brain which is doing the seeing, the hearing etc. The rest of this paragraph is an elaboration of the explanation with the examples of seeing a red rose. So we don't need to include all of this. 
How does synaesthesia happen?
We’re all different right? Some people look different. And some people think differently. And different people have their brains wired in different ways too. People with synaesthesia have tiny differences in their brain which means the seeing part can sometimes become activated by a signal from the ears. Or the tasting part can become activated by a signal from the eyes. And They might experience a feeling of colour from something they hear. Or a feeling of taste from something they see. They have connections across the senses that other people don’t have, which, while uncommon is completely normal. It’s also pretty cool.
The answer to the question posed in the title of this paragraph is really a continuation of the explanation started in the previous paragraph (about how it is the brain which provides our seeing, tasting, hearing ... sensations). Here we get the explanations of how people with synaesthesia experience seeing, tasting, hearing ... in different ways; People with synaesthesia have tiny differences in their brain which means the seeing part can sometimes become activated by a signal from the ears ..
What if I have synaesthesia?
If you have synaesthesia you’re called a synaesthete. And you are not alone. You might want to ask your mum and dad if they have it, as it’s often hereditary. You could ask your friends in class too. On average, there are likely to be two to five other children in your school with synaesthesia. Over the last 20 years as a neuropsychologist, I’ve heard from thousands of people with different kinds of synaesthesia. One common type is when you have colours for letters and numbers. So if you’ve known since you were little the exact colour of the letter A, or the colour of the number 7, then – congratulations! – you probably have what we call grapheme-colour synaesthesia: your brain makes connections between letters or numbers and colours. (Common associations are A=red, O=black or white, S=yellow, 1=black or white.) Synaesthetes’ experiences can be interesting and creative, so I wish I had synaesthesia too. Researchers have even been trying to find out if you can be trained to have synaesthetic abilities. It might be rare, but having synaesthesia makes you a special person. It also comes with certain advantages. Synaesthetes tend to have better memories and be better at picturing things in their minds. They even do better at some school subjects, like spelling.
The last paragraph gives facts about having synaesthesia; that it is often hereditary, how common it is, that there are many different types of synaesthesia (with one example), that synaesthetes’ experiences can be interesting and creative, what researchers are trying to discover concerning synaesthesia, and the advantages of having synaesthesia. It's difficult to include all of these in a summary so you have to decide which are the most important and how you are going to combine them into one or two sentences.

Final Summary

The following is a summary of the above text. It is 107 words long, compared to 722 words of the original text, so this is a short summary (15%). Click on the links to see the connections between the summary and the corresponding information in the original text.

Synaesthesia describes how some people experience stimuli though a mixture of senses, such as hearing sounds when they see a colour. Although we have separate organs for different senses, it is the brain which deals with the signals from these organs. In people with synaesthesia signals from one sense organ may be dealt with by a part of the brain which usually deals with signals from another organ. So they may see colours when they listen to music. Synaesthesia is not common but there are many different kinds, some of which may be interesting or creative, so having synaesthesia provides advantages such as better memory and visualization ability.

Other Considerations

  1. Length
    The summary above is about as short as it can be without leaving out important information. You should following any length guidelines you are given when writing a summary.
  2. Examples
    We said above that examples are not necessary in a summary but we have some here ("such as hearing sounds when they see a colour", "such as better memory and visualization ability"). Sometimes a sentence is not really complete without an example to make things clear. You have to make a decision about whether an example is needed or not and whether you have enough space in your allotted summary length to include one.
  3. Style
    Unless you have been asked to write your summary in a particular style, the style of your summary should match that of the original text. The text used in this example was written by an expert in her field (neuropsychology). But it was written in answer to a query posed by an eleven-year-old. So the text is written in a simple familiar style (e.g. "You might want to ask your mum and dad if they have it") without too many specialist terms. Your summary is probably not addressed to an eleven-year-old, nevertheless the style of your summary should be simple, factual, sticking only to the main points of the explanation.
  4. Emphasis
    Occasionally you may be asked to place particular emphasis on one section or aspect of the original text in your summary. If that is the case, make sure you pay attention to those instructions.
  5. Locating the central meaning of the text.
    If the text you are asked to summarize contains few or no useful headings or it is difficult to locate topic sentences or a thesis statement, your task becomes more difficult. However, you should remember that in most texts meaning is carried mainly by nouns. And coherent texts often have chains of repeating nouns (or similar nouns, or words belonging to the same lexical set). You can see more about this on the lexical chains page. By identifying repeated and similar words in a text, you can often get a good idea of the gist, as you can see in the example below:
Lexical Chains in this Text

Curious Kids: Why do people with synaesthesia link senses, and how does it work?
Look around you – what does the world feel like? Some of it – like the colours – feels like it’s coming in through your eyes. You can’t hear the colours, or smell them, right? You can see them. Eyes are for seeing, ears are for hearing sounds, noses and mouths are for smelling and tasting, and your fingertips are for touching. But what would happen if you could hear with your eyes? Or see with your ears? This is what it means to have synaesthesia (pronounced sinna-STEE-zia).
What is synaesthesia?
Synaesthesia is a long word with a hard spelling that even adults get wrong. (It doesn’t help that it’s often spelled slightly differently, “synesthesia”, in the US.) It’s a word that describes a special way of sensing the world – a merging or a linking of the senses . There are lots of different ways to have synaesthesia. Some people can see colours when they hear music. Other people can taste flavours in their mouth when they read words. And others can hear sounds when they look at bright colours, or watch silent, moving objects. We think there are over 100 ways of experiencing it, but only a small number of people in the world who do.
How can you hear a colour?
You might think your senses are separate from one another, that colours can only be seen by your eyes or sounds only be heard by your ears. But in fact, the brain is actually the big boss of everything. It’s the only one doing the seeing, the hearing, the tasting, and so on. When you see a red rose, the colour is just the rose bouncing a certain part of the sun’s light into your eyes. This in turn makes your eyes send an electrical signal to your brain, much like a current down an electrical wire. The actual feeling of redness only happens once that signal reaches a special part of your brain, called the occipital cortex. This is the part of your brain that sees. When it receives a signal from the eyes, it kind of springs into action (neuroscientists say it “activates”), and this is when you feel the colour red. So redness is not something on the rose, but something in your brain. It is a feeling that happens when you activate a specific part of your brain. And the same is true for other feelings: coldness or loudness or prickliness all have their own brain activations too.
How does synaesthesia happen?
We’re all different right? Some people look different. And some people think differently. And different people have their brains wired in different ways too. People with synaesthesia have tiny differences in their brain which means the seeing part can sometimes become activated by a signal from the ears. Or the tasting part can become activated by a signal from the eyes. They might experience a feeling of colour from something they hear. Or a feeling of taste from something they see. They have connections across the senses that other people don’t have, which, while uncommon is completely normal. It’s also pretty cool.
What if I have synaesthesia?
If you have synaesthesia you’re called a synaesthete. And you are not alone. You might want to ask your mum and dad if they have it, as it’s often hereditary. You could ask your friends in class too. On average, there are likely to be two to five other children in your school with synaesthesia. Over the last 20 years as a neuropsychologist, I’ve heard from thousands of people with different kinds of synaesthesia. One common type is when you have colours for letters and numbers. So if you’ve known since you were little the exact colour of the letter A, or the colour of the number 7, then – congratulations! – you probably have what we call grapheme-colour synaesthesia: your brain makes connections between letters or numbers and colours. (Common associations are A=red, O=black or white, S=yellow, 1=black or white.) Synaesthetes’ experiences can be interesting and creative, so I wish I had synaesthesia too. Researchers have even been trying to find out if you can be trained to have synaesthetic abilities. It might be rare, but having synaesthesia makes you a special person. It also comes with certain advantages. Synaesthetes tend to have better memories and be better at picturing things in their minds. They even do better at some school subjects, like spelling.


The word synaesthesia (including its derivatives) occurs 19 times in this text. That's not surprising since that is the topic of the article. The word colour or colours occurs 14 times in this text. The word brain or brains occurs 10 times in this text. Words belonging to the lexical set of sensations (feeling, experience, senses) occur 15 times. Verbs of perception are (taste, smell, see, etc.) are very common, and the noun signal occurs 5 times. All this can give you a strong sense of what the text is about. So it is often useful to look out for these lexical chains.
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