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saw or the last novel you read. Chances are, at some point in a casual conversation with
a friend, coworker, or classmate, you compressed all the action in a two-hour film or in a
two-hundred-page book into a brief description of the major plot movements. While in
conversation, you probably described the major highlights, or the main points in just a
few sentences, using your own vocabulary and manner of speaking.
Similarly, a summary paragraph condenses a long piece of writing into a smaller
paragraph by extracting only the vital information. A summary uses only the writer’s
own words. Like the summary’s purpose in daily conversation, the purpose of an
academic summary paragraph is to maintain all the essential information from a longer
document. Although shorter than the original piece of writing, a summary should still
communicate all the key points and key support. In other words, summary paragraphs
should be succinct and to the point.