As equally important as finding accurate and pertinent information, it is very important to be able to summarize and get the most out of your information. Summaries play an important role in workplace communication, but there are four different types of summaries, such as closing summaries, informative abstracts, descriptive abstracts, and executive abstracts. Again, you must also consider ethical issues when you are writing summaries. It's also important to plan your summary when you have to write a long document.
A summary restates the main ideas in a long document, and they convey the general meaning of something without losing the main ideas. Writing a summary means that you must provide only the essential information in your own words without leaving out things that would cause you to lose the original point.
It's important to consider your audience and purpose when writing a summary because this shapes how you will write it. Your summary may be a research aid, or it may be a part of something you use at work. For example, when working with long reports, proposals, and other complex documents, you usually precede them with a summary.
The purpose of summaries, of course, is to provide an overview with essential facts. No matter what you are summarizing, you need to describe what the original document is about, give readers the chance to decide whether they will read the whole document or parts of it, and it give the reader a way to understand the whole document, given that they even plan to read it.
For shorter documents, such as letters and memos, only an opening thesis or topic sentence is necessary to present the information.
There are several elements that are usually in an effective summary. These include accuracy, completeness, readability, conciseness, and a nontechnical style. There are also guidelines that may help you summarize your information. The first is that you must first completely read the entire document; then reread it, and underline what is most important. Next, take time to edit the information that you underlined. Then, rewrite the most important information in your own words-- this is your first draft, which must next be edited. You should also cross-reference your summary to the original document. Rewrite your edite version again, respecting a stipulating word limit. Finally, you are ready to document your source, making sure to cite the exact source below your summary.
In addition to summarizing reports, proposals, and other documents, you will probably have to summarize your own works at some point. There are several different types of summaries which you will probably create at some point. A closing summary appears in the conclusion and it reviews the main findings in the previous sections. By looking at "the big picture", readers can appreciate the conclusions and recommendations that will follow a closing summary. An informative abstract precedes a full report, while condensing what the entire document contains. Readers oftentimes appreciate when a long report or proposal is condensed. The term informative abstract is not actually used much nowadays, but it is termed, simply, "summary" instead. A descriptive abstract appears on the title page, and it describes only what the document covers. It is usually one to three sentences, and it doesn't give the report's main points. This abstract helps people decide whether they actually want to read the report or not. These are also used more often in sciences and social sciences because they most focus on methodology rather than actual results. An executive abstract also precedes the full report, as well as helping to guide the thinking of decision makers. It's a special type of informative abstract, and it's geared towards decision makers instead of a technical audience. It generally has a more persuasive emphasis, as its purpose is to get the readers to act on the presented information. This abstract is critical when its reader has no time to actually read the document.
More information in summary format nowadays is increasingly important to reader's today because they oftentimes feel bombarded by information-overload. However, there are several ethical pitfalls that are brought up by summarizing information. First, condensed versions of information in a complex document oftentimes neglect to communicate just how complicated a document is. A summarizer also has to choose what to leave in and what to leave out, and during this selection process, they may leave an important piece of information out. Also, when you are summarizing someone else's writing, the voice of the document will disappear, in addition to the writer's viewpoint or intent. A distortion of the original writer's viewpoint is considered a form of plagiarism.
An important thing to remember is that even though summaries are crucial to corporate work today, when a topic or document is more complex, readers will need the complete story to have an accurate idea about the document.
Group Discussion Question: Have you ever had to summarize a document in a corporate job? What about in a research project? What sorts of things did you consider when you constructed your summary? What do you consider when you write the summaries for this class?
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