4b Summarize to deepen your understanding.

When you read critically, you ask “What is this text about?” to understand a text’s main ideas and key points. When you summarize, you test your understanding of a text by putting the main ideas in your own words—concisely, objectively, and accurately.

Guidelines for writing a summary

• In the first sentence, mention the title of the text, the name of the author, and the author’s thesis.
• Maintain a neutral tone; be objective.
• As you present the author’s ideas, use the third-person point of view and the present tense: Taylor argues. . . . (If you are writing in APA style, see 49c.)
• Keep your focus on the text. Don’t state the author’s ideas as if they were your own.
• Put all or most of your summary in your own words; if you borrow a phrase or a sentence from the text, put it in quotation marks and give the page number in parentheses.
• Limit yourself to presenting the text’s key points, not every detail.