ENG 111 Strayer The Complicated Truth About Social Media and Body Image Essay

Summary assignment directions (summary due 11/4)

What is a summary?

A summary is simply a condensed, but very focused, overview of a particular article, essay, or even book. It gives enough information about a source for other readers to know the source’s basic contents without having to read the entire text themselves. In science or other technical fields, summaries are often called “abstracts” and help researchers quickly weed through volumes of material as they search for relevant topics; in literature, a summary is sometimes called a “synopsis.” In English 111, however, we will simply call them summaries, bearing these qualifications:

1. Generally, summaries are never more than one fourth of the original article. 20-25% of the original length is about right.
2. Summaries always state the author and article (or book) title in the first sentence, along with the author’s main idea, also known as the thesis.
3. Summaries do give main points but do not go into great detail. As the summary’s purpose is to inform another person of general, not specific, content, details are not necessary.
4. A well-written summary shows how well you understood the article’s content because you are forced to rewrite it, but in a very condensed way.
5. Summaries should be written in your own words , but if you do use more than three consecutive words of text from the article, use quotation marks and give the page number.
6. Summaries can be either informative or evaluative. Informative summaries simply report the main idea and key supporting points. Evaluative summaries include the writer’s assessment of how valuable, accurate, valid, interesting, or well-written the article is.