PAPER making! FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL ® FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TEC Volume 11, Number 3, 2025 Summarising and Paraphrasing
What is summarising/paraphrasing? • A process of condensing or shortening a written text while preserving its overall meaning. A summary is frequently made of a complete text (an article, or a chapter in a book), whereas a paraphrase is a short section (one or two sentences, or a paragraph) from the source text which is written in different words, or combination of words, whilst keeping the same meaning; it is a ‘translation’ of the writer's words into your own words. Summarising and paraphrasing are essential skills in academic work. They involve extracting the key points from a source text, turning these key points into an abbreviated version (a summary) of the original, and, importantly, expressing this information in your own words. This is necessary to avoid plagiarism (using someone's words or ideas as if they were your own). It is important to note that texts which have been summarised or paraphrased still need to be referenced in your work; otherwise, you may be accused of plagiarism. For the rest of this unit, both summarising and paraphrasing will be referred to as summarising. Reasons for summarising • To demonstrate your understanding of your reading • To establish ideas you will discuss in your writing • To inform your readers who might not have read the original text you are summarising • To support an idea you are discussing in your work. Features of a good summary • It should offer a balanced coverage of all the main points in the original text • It should make the key points of the original clear • It should be written in your own words as far as possible and not rely on too many phrases lifted from the original. However, you should not choose obscure, uncommon synonyms just to avoid using words or phrases from the original text. You do not need to change technical, specialised, or conventional terminology or phrases, as these can often only be paraphrased by awkward, inaccurate circumlocutions. • It should generally avoid using exactly the same sentence structure as the original • It should not overemphasise (or even underemphasise) any of the original points • It should not include any extra information which is not in the text you are summarising • It should not include details of secondary importance • It should not include examples • It should be shorter, not longer, than the original text • It must contain a citation (reference). Different types of summary Summaries can be: 1. Informative – these provide the main facts and conclusions of a complete work. They tend to be one or two paragraphs long, e.g. most academic journal abstracts and dissertation abstracts (although these may be longer). Example Abstract Tropical deforestation is a significant driver of global environmental change, given its impacts on the carbon cycle and biodiversity. Loss of the Amazon forest, the focus of this article, is of particular concern because of the size and the rapid rate at which the forest is being converted to agricultural use. In this article, we identify what has been the most important driver of deforestation in a specific colonization frontier in the Brazilian Amazon. To this end,
Article 12 – Summarising
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