How to Write a Summary of an Article – Five Tips by Experts [2022]

Learning how to summarize an article is one of the fundamental skills we learn in school. Whether we are writing an academic paper or just studying for a midterm exam, knowing how to write a summary of an article would help you increase your chances of academic success. 

However, despite our academic training, most of us would still find summarizing tedious and challenging. For the most part, this may be due to our tendency to find the right balance between ‘comprehensiveness’ and ‘shortness’ (aka conciseness), which is the foundation of any well-written summary. 

In this article, I would like to share five essential tips on how to write an article summary for any academic work you might have. Note that I’m about to discuss not the basics of summary writing but additional methods or techniques that expert writers learned and use through their decades of experience. 

Stay tuned until the end since I also provided a summary writing example that you can use to jumpstart your writing process. 

I. What is Summary Writing?

Simply said, summary writing is the art and process of writing a concise version of a longer piece. 

On the one hand, it must be comprehensive enough to include all relevant and necessary details for the primary goal of your writing process. 

On the other hand, it must also be short and straightforward to ensure that your reader (including yourself) would learn without experiencing ‘information overload.’ 

Now that we have answered the common question ‘what is summary writing,’ the next step in the process is knowing how to summarize an article like an expert writer. 

Note, however, that summarizing is different from rewriting (or paraphrasing) for a number of reasons. Check out our related posts to learn more about the differences between the two, or if you are trying to learn about how to rewrite an essay. 

II. How to Write a Summary of an Article According to the Pros

1. Read (Internalize) your Source Article Carefully

This is perhaps one of the most obvious yet taken-for-granted steps in summarization. Reading an article not only gives you knowledge about its contents but also allows you to internalize and create a ‘mental map’ (mind map) of its structure and contents.

Imagine reading (or, in our case, listening) to the fairy tale story Snow White when we were kids. At first, we tend to remember only bits and pieces of the story, including the characters, the apple, the wicked queen, and the mirror on the wall, among others. This initial exposure to the story helps lay down pieces on our mental map.

As we read or listen to the story, our brains tend to remember more details again, thereby adding to our existing mind map. As you can imagine, repeating this over and over again helps create a complete picture, which we can use in conceptualizing the story, knowing the pieces to add and remove, and even polishing your own finished product. 

In line with our question ‘how to write a summary of an article, it becomes evident that this mind map would provide us with an unfiltered idea about our topic. You can even create an actual diagram if you have the time to increase the preciseness of your own analysis. 

If you want to learn more about how to create a mental map, check out our extensive posts regarding the topic. Nonetheless, this shows that reading and internalizing the article itself is essential if you want to create a masterful summary. 

2. Don’t Lose Track of your Goal.

Ever heard the saying “eyes on the forest, not the trees”? This is exactly what you should do when trying to start a summary of an article or a full-blown essay. 

Now that you have internalized and created a mental map of your topic, the next step is writing the summary itself. But even before you click on your keyboard, you should keep track of your goal in creating a summary. This is very important, especially if you are not only writing a single summary of an article but is crafting something more complex like an article critique, an annotated bibliography, or even a review of related literature, to name a few.

Now, what do ‘goals’ mean in writing a summary? Goals simply refer to the end point of your writing. The thing that you want to achieve. 

For example, if you are writing a summary about Snow White as part of a larger paper that tackles feminism, then your focus should be to keep as many details relating to the feminist manifestations in the literature itself. You can even retain some quotes relating to your topic, provided that they are ‘absolutely essential to drive your point. 

The quote below is taken from Brothers Grimm’s 1812 Snow White book, which sets a feminist vibe as early as the beginning of the story…

“If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the window frame.”

From this, we can argue whether this quote is essential for your summary since quotes can tip the balance between comprehensiveness and shortness, but one thing is clear, keeping your focus on your larger goal is your key to success. 

One piece of advice that expert writers do, not only in summarizing but in other writing endeavors, is to post a small memo somewhere near your field of vision while writing. This is beneficial if you do not have time to create complex writing diagrams, which would organize points between themes. 

3. Identify Sections and Reorder Ideas as Needed

Now we have reached the part where you learn how to start a summary. 

Just like any other piece of writing, learning how to start a summary requires learning how to create a short outline in your head. However, compared to a full-blown paper, you can try to keep your outline short and simple since; (1) its only purpose is to guide you through the writing process, and (2) summaries can be as short as a paragraph. 

Additionally, it would help if you will use your mental map to ‘reorder’ the structure of your summary. In most cases, there is no clear and express rule that you should follow the narrative of the story you are summarizing. Accordingly, reorganizing your elements to make them easier to read would even create the impression that you have mastered your subject well. 

If you want to learn more about how to reorganize ideas, you can check an example of a summary in the last section of this article. 

4. Write Intently and Continuously

The only way to write a good essay is actually to write one. This is one of the lessons that every experienced writer learns, whether in writing an essay or crafting a summary of an article. 

What ‘writing intently and continuously’ actually meant is immersing yourself in the writing process. In my years of writing (and learning from other writers), I learned that most writers would enter into what psychologists would call a “flow state” or what most people would refer to as “being in the zone.” 

Note, however, that while everyone can do this while writing, the key to mastering it is having in-depth knowledge about your topic. According to Vinney (2019), “the activity must be challenging enough to require the individual to stretch their skill level just beyond their current capabilities. Ultimately, the balance between skill level and challenge must be optimal to achieve flow.”

“the activity must be challenging enough to require the individual to stretch their skill level just beyond their current capabilities. Ultimately, the balance between skill level and challenge must be optimal to achieve flow.”

In other words, learning how to write an article summary requires a challenge coupled with an in-depth knowledge of your topic (which we have achieved in the preceding steps), or entering into a state of flow would be difficult if not impossible. 

5. Polish your Summary

Want to create an award-winning summary? Polish your work! 

Polishing refers to the general process of re-reading, proofreading, and improving your piece. In the case of writing a summary, polishing helps you identify pieces that you can remove (thereby making it shorter) and parts that require more evidence (thereby increasing comprehensiveness). 

Personally, this is one of the steps in the process that I forget to do, especially in writing one-paragraph summaries. However, this would be highly beneficial if your summaries are part of a larger paper, such as an annotated bibliography or a review of related literature, since it helps you “see the forest, rather than the trees.” 

III. Summary Writing Example [PDF]

The following example shows an example of a summary of the book written by Laudon and Traver entitled E-commerce. If you are looking for a sample of how to write a book summary, this resource will provide a good template you can use for practice.