Summary Writing Rules with Examples

A summary restates a passage in your own words at about one third of its length. Read the passage twice, underline the main idea of each paragraph, drop examples, repetitions and figures of speech, then join what is left into connected prose in the third person and the past or present as the passage uses. Never copy whole sentences.

The format

Read twice before writing anything

Read the passage once for the general sense and a second time with a pencil. The second reading is where the work happens: mark the sentence in each paragraph that carries its main idea, and cross out examples, repetitions, figures of speech and anything in brackets.

Students who begin writing after one reading almost always summarise the first half in detail and the second half in a rush, because they did not know where the passage was going.

Cut to about one third

The conventional length is one third of the original, and boards usually state it. Count the words of the passage, divide by three, and write to that target — being substantially over or under costs marks even when the content is right.

What to keep and what to drop

Write in your own words

This is the rule that carries the most marks and is broken most often. A summary made of sentences lifted from the passage shows none of the judgement the task is testing, and boards mark it down heavily even when the sentences chosen are the right ones.

• Replace the writer’s words with your own wherever you can do so accurately.
• Technical terms and proper names may be kept — there is no synonym for photosynthesis or Kurigram.
• Join the ideas into connected prose, not a list of points.
• 🚨 Never copy a whole sentence. Two or three consecutive words is the usual limit before it reads as copying.

Person, tense and voice

Write in the third person even if the passage is in the first, unless the question says otherwise. Keep the tense of the original: a passage about a general truth stays in the present, a narrative stays in the past. Do not add your own opinion, and do not address the reader.

Give it a title if asked

A precis normally requires a title and a summary sometimes does. Make it a phrase rather than a sentence, three to six words, naming the subject — The value of reading, not This passage is about reading.

Model answer

Worked example

Original passage (about 150 words)

Reading is one of the few pleasures that costs almost nothing and grows the more it is used. A boy who reads for an hour a day will, without any effort at all, acquire a vocabulary far larger than a boy who does not, and he will acquire it in the only way vocabulary is ever properly acquired — by meeting words repeatedly in company that explains them. But the gain is not only in words. A reader learns, without being taught, how an argument is built, how a story is shaped, and how a paragraph moves from one idea to the next. Above all, reading gives him the experience of other lives. He may never leave his district, but he will have been, in imagination, to places and situations he could not otherwise have reached, and he will understand people he has never met a little better for it.

Summary (about 50 words)

Reading costs little and improves with practice. Regular readers build large vocabularies naturally, by meeting words in context rather than by memorising them, and they absorb the shape of arguments and stories without instruction. Most importantly, reading lets people share experiences and understand others they will never meet.

What was done

The illustration of the boy was dropped and its point kept. "In the only way vocabulary is ever properly acquired" was compressed to "in context rather than by memorising". The final image of never leaving one's district was replaced by the idea behind it. Nothing was copied for more than two consecutive words.

What earns and loses marks

• 🚨 Count the words of the passage and divide by three before you start writing. Guessing the length is where most of the length marks are lost.
• Mark the main idea of each paragraph in the passage itself — one summary sentence per paragraph is a reliable starting structure.
• Read your summary alone, without the passage. If it does not make sense on its own, you have cut a connection you needed.
• Never begin with “This passage is about…” or “The writer says…”. Start with the content itself.
• Leave out your own opinion entirely, however strongly you disagree with the passage.

Mistakes to avoid

• ✗ The writer says in this passage that reading is very important for us. ✓ Reading costs little and improves with practice. — a summary reports the content, not the existence of the passage
• ✗ A boy who reads for an hour a day will acquire a vocabulary far larger than a boy who does not. ✓ Regular readers build large vocabularies naturally. — the first is copied verbatim