While being able to summarise is a particularly important skill for older children and students who want to continue with academic studies, it is also useful for others. In higher education, much of the work that students will have to do will include reading the work of writers in their field of study, understanding their ideas and using these to demonstrate their own understanding of various topics.

A summary must include all the main ideas of the original work, but uses fewer words: it is a good way of storing information that can be referred to later.

Summarising is a way of outlining the main points of an article, a talk or a long page or chapter of a book using your own words so that it can be referred to later when the information is required again, such as when writing an essay, preparing a presentation, or for answering an examination question.

This unit explains what to include and what to leave out of a summary and reminds students to use their own words.

There are exercises to help them recognise what makes a good summary and how to write them. Students also get a chance to write their own summary of an article, and print it out to compare with other model summaries.