Summarizing the Summary

Have you ever seen a great movie and wanted to tell everyone about it? Chances are that when you did, you didn’t recite the movie word-for-word, rather identified the main plot of the movie and some big moments that you found important for understanding the movie. If you’ve ever done this, then you’re already familiar with creating a summary.

When we summarize something –including an entire book, a scholarly article, a YouTube video, or an Instagram post, an ongoing research project– we give our reader a boiled down version of the text, including enough information that the reader will understand the purpose of the text and the big takeaways that the source stressed. If a larger work is especially relevant to our own ideas, we can summarize the text to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the work and later explain to the reader how it connects to our ideas.

Structuring a Summary

First, you want to introduce the name of the work you’re summarizing, including the name of the writer, researcher, or organization. This gives your reader a head’s up that you’re moving from your own words to the words of someone else.

Second, you will need to clearly state the text’s main idea, research question, or argument. In doing so, you can indicate the purpose: does the text want to convince someone of something? Inform an audience about a new policy? Critique a practice or idea?

Third, provide more specific details about how the text goes on to achieve its purpose. Include content that highlights how the text works towards its purpose.

Fourth, indicate the big takeaways from the text. How does the text establish the importance of the included content?

Connecting the Ideas

Introducing the Source

Before jumping into the summary itself, you want to clearly introduce the source of the text you’re summarizing. When you name the source, you want to be as specific as possible. Rather than saying “the article talks about,” or “the post includes,” you would want to say “Safiya Noble examines…” or “@UtahTechU shared a post that…”

This not only serves as a clear visual indicator that you’re about to summarize something, but it also gives the reader an effective understanding of how that summary fits within your writing itself.

Connecting All of the Ideas

Summaries task a writer with boiling down a larger, more complex text to something that can be read and understood in a fraction of the time as the original. The full text you’re summarizing will very likely have an overarching idea –like an opinion, research question, or general purpose –and ideas that provide further necessary details in response to that overarching idea.

Because a summary condenses a larger work, it’s important to clearly indicate how the various ideas you’re summarizing connect to one another. Transitional words and phrases can help illustrate how the various concepts connect to one another. Review these resources on transitions for ideas:

• Transitional Words and Phrases 
• 92 Essay Transition Words to Know  
• 33 Transition Words and Phrases
• Transition Words

Examples In Academic Writing

Original Text

The book talks about how computers can make poverty worse.

What It Lacks

The summary above lacks necessary specifics and greatly reduces the focus of the book to where it’s largely indistinguishable from other books on a similar topic. Also, there is no clear indication of who the author is or the scope of their work.

Revised Text

In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks examines how computer algorithms can reinforce the circumstances that perpetuate poverty in the United States. Eubanks’ research into the role of algorithms in healthcare, housing, and child protection stresses the importance of remaining critical of digital infrastructures designed to help with decision and policy making.

What Works

This summary clearly introduces both the author’s name and the title of the book. The purpose of the book and its key findings are clearly identified, as well as relevant specific concepts used to explore those concepts in greater detail.

In the Digital World

Wicked (musical) – Wikipedia

“Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is a loose adaptation of the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which in turn is based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaptation. The musical is told from the perspective of two witches, Elphaba and Glinda, before and after Dorothy’s arrival in Oz. The story explores the complex friendship between Elphaba (who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West) and Galinda (who becomes Glinda the Good). Their relationship is tested by their contrasting personalities, conflicting viewpoints, shared love interest, reactions to the corrupt rule of the Wizard of Oz, and ultimately, Elphaba’s tragic fate at the accidental hands of Dorothy Gale.

Produced by Universal Stage Productions with producers Marc Platt, Jon B. Platt and David Stone, director Joe Mantello and choreographer Wayne Cilento, the original production of Wicked premiered on Broadway at the Gershwin Theatre in October 2003, after completing pre-Broadway tryouts at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre in May and June of that year. Its original stars included Idina Menzel as Elphaba, Kristin Chenoweth as Galinda, Norbert Leo Butz as Fiyero and Joel Grey as the Wizard.

The original Broadway production won a total of three Tony Awards and seven Drama Desk Awards, while its original cast album received a Grammy Award. The success of the Broadway production has spawned many productions worldwide, including a long-running West End production. Wicked has broken box-office records around the world, holding weekly-gross-takings records in Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, and London. In the week ending January 2, 2011, the Broadway, London, and both North American touring productions simultaneously broke their respective records for the highest weekly gross. In the final week of 2013, the Broadway production broke this record again, earning US$3.2 million. In 2016, Wicked surpassed $1 billion in total Broadway revenue, joining The Phantom of the Opera and The Lion King as the only Broadway shows to do so. In 2017, Wicked surpassed The Phantom of the Opera as Broadway’s second-highest grossing musical, trailing only The Lion King.

A two-part film adaptation was directed by Jon M. Chu and starred Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande as Glinda, and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, with extended cameos by Menzel and Chenoweth. The first part was released on November 22, 2024, and was a critical and commercial success. The second part is scheduled for release on November 21, 2025.”

Why It Works

The point of a summary is to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of a text, event, etc. The musical Wicked has a long history both concerning its development and impact in pop culture. This summary clearly introduces the stage production as the focus of the summary, differentiating it from the book and the movie musical. Various elements, including an overview of the plot, major milestones, and ongoing adaptations, are connected seamlessly through the effective use of transition words and phrases.

More on Summaries

• “Writing a Summary” from Las Positas College Reading & Writing Center
• “Writing a Summary” from UAGC Writing Center