summary essay introduction example

How to Write an Essay Introduction (with Examples)   

The introduction of an essay plays a critical role in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. It sets the stage for the rest of the essay, establishes the tone and style, and motivates the reader to continue reading. 

Table of Contents

What is an essay introduction , what to include in an essay introduction, how to create an essay structure , step-by-step process for writing an essay introduction , how to write an essay introduction paragraph with paperpal – step -by -step, how to write a hook for your essay , how to include background information , how to write a thesis statement .

• Argumentative Essay Introduction Example: 
• Expository Essay Introduction Example 

Literary Analysis Essay Introduction Example

Check and revise – checklist for essay introduction , key takeaways , frequently asked questions .

An introduction is the opening section of an essay, paper, or other written work. It introduces the topic and provides background information, context, and an overview of what the reader can expect from the rest of the work. 1 The key is to be concise and to the point, providing enough information to engage the reader without delving into excessive detail. 

The essay introduction is crucial as it sets the tone for the entire piece and provides the reader with a roadmap of what to expect. Here are key elements to include in your essay introduction: 

• Hook : Start with an attention-grabbing statement or question to engage the reader. This could be a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or a compelling anecdote. 
• Background information : Provide context and background information to help the reader understand the topic. This can include historical information, definitions of key terms, or an overview of the current state of affairs related to your topic. 
• Thesis statement : Clearly state your main argument or position on the topic. Your thesis should be concise and specific, providing a clear direction for your essay. 

Before we get into how to write an essay introduction, we need to know how it is structured. The structure of an essay is crucial for organizing your thoughts and presenting them clearly and logically. It is divided as follows: 2  

• Introduction:  The introduction should grab the reader’s attention with a hook, provide context, and include a thesis statement that presents the main argument or purpose of the essay.  
• Body:  The body should consist of focused paragraphs that support your thesis statement using evidence and analysis. Each paragraph should concentrate on a single central idea or argument and provide evidence, examples, or analysis to back it up.  
• Conclusion:  The conclusion should summarize the main points and restate the thesis differently. End with a final statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. Avoid new information or arguments. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to write an essay introduction: 

• Start with a Hook : Begin your introduction paragraph with an attention-grabbing statement, question, quote, or anecdote related to your topic. The hook should pique the reader’s interest and encourage them to continue reading. 
• Provide Background Information : This helps the reader understand the relevance and importance of the topic. 
• State Your Thesis Statement : The last sentence is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be clear, concise, and directly address the topic of your essay. 
• Preview the Main Points : This gives the reader an idea of what to expect and how you will support your thesis. 
• Keep it Concise and Clear : Avoid going into too much detail or including information not directly relevant to your topic. 
• Revise : Revise your introduction after you’ve written the rest of your essay to ensure it aligns with your final argument. 

Unsure of how to start your essay introduction? Leverage Paperpal’s Generative AI templates to provide a base for your essay introduction. Here’s an example of an essay outline generated by Paperpal.  

Use the generated essay outline as your base for the introduction. If you’re stuck writing, you can use Paperpal’s Predictive AI writing features to continue writing. 

Use Paperpal’s Preditive AI writing features to maintain your writing flow

This is one of the key steps in how to write an essay introduction. Crafting a compelling hook is vital because it sets the tone for your entire essay and determines whether your readers will stay interested. A good hook draws the reader in and sets the stage for the rest of your essay.  

• Avoid Dry Fact : Instead of simply stating a bland fact, try to make it engaging and relevant to your topic. For example, if you’re writing about the benefits of exercise, you could start with a startling statistic like, “Did you know that regular exercise can increase your lifespan by up to seven years?” 
• Avoid Using a Dictionary Definition : While definitions can be informative, they’re not always the most captivating way to start an essay. Instead, try to use a quote, anecdote, or provocative question to pique the reader’s interest. For instance, if you’re writing about freedom, you could begin with a quote from a famous freedom fighter or philosopher. 
• Do Not Just State a Fact That the Reader Already Knows : This ties back to the first point—your hook should surprise or intrigue the reader. For Here’s an introduction paragraph example, if you’re writing about climate change, you could start with a thought-provoking statement like, “Despite overwhelming evidence, many people still refuse to believe in the reality of climate change.” 

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Including background information in the introduction section of your essay is important to provide context and establish the relevance of your topic. When writing the background information, you can follow these steps: 

• Start with a General Statement:  Begin with a general statement about the topic and gradually narrow it down to your specific focus. For example, when discussing the impact of social media, you can begin by making a broad statement about social media and its widespread use in today’s society, as follows: “Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of users worldwide.” 
• Define Key Terms : Define any key terms or concepts that may be unfamiliar to your readers but are essential for understanding your argument. 
• Provide Relevant Statistics:  Use statistics or facts to highlight the significance of the issue you’re discussing. For instance, “According to a report by Statista, the number of social media users is expected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025.” 
• Discuss the Evolution:  Mention previous research or studies that have been conducted on the topic, especially those that are relevant to your argument. Mention key milestones or developments that have shaped its current impact. You can also outline some of the major effects of social media. For example, you can briefly describe how social media has evolved, including positives such as increased connectivity and issues like cyberbullying and privacy concerns. 
• Transition to Your Thesis:  Use the background information to lead into your thesis statement, which should clearly state the main argument or purpose of your essay. For example, “Given its pervasive influence, it is crucial to examine the impact of social media on mental health.” 

A thesis statement is a concise summary of the main point or claim of an essay, research paper, or other type of academic writing. It appears near the end of the introduction. Here’s how to write a thesis statement: 

• Identify the topic:  Start by identifying the topic of your essay. For example, if your essay is about the importance of exercise for overall health, your topic is “exercise.” 
• State your position:  Next, state your position or claim about the topic. This is the main argument or point you want to make. For example, if you believe that regular exercise is crucial for maintaining good health, your position could be: “Regular exercise is essential for maintaining good health.” 
• Support your position:  Provide a brief overview of the reasons or evidence that support your position. These will be the main points of your essay. For example, if you’re writing an essay about the importance of exercise, you could mention the physical health benefits, mental health benefits, and the role of exercise in disease prevention. 
• Make it specific:  Ensure your thesis statement clearly states what you will discuss in your essay. For example, instead of saying, “Exercise is good for you,” you could say, “Regular exercise, including cardiovascular and strength training, can improve overall health and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.” 

Examples of essay introduction 

Here are examples of essay introductions for different types of essays: 

Argumentative Essay Introduction Example:  

Topic: Should the voting age be lowered to 16? 

“The question of whether the voting age should be lowered to 16 has sparked nationwide debate. While some argue that 16-year-olds lack the requisite maturity and knowledge to make informed decisions, others argue that doing so would imbue young people with agency and give them a voice in shaping their future.” 

Expository Essay Introduction Example  

Topic: The benefits of regular exercise 

“In today’s fast-paced world, the importance of regular exercise cannot be overstated. From improving physical health to boosting mental well-being, the benefits of exercise are numerous and far-reaching. This essay will examine the various advantages of regular exercise and provide tips on incorporating it into your daily routine.” 

Text: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee 

“Harper Lee’s novel, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ is a timeless classic that explores themes of racism, injustice, and morality in the American South. Through the eyes of young Scout Finch, the reader is taken on a journey that challenges societal norms and forces characters to confront their prejudices. This essay will analyze the novel’s use of symbolism, character development, and narrative structure to uncover its deeper meaning and relevance to contemporary society.” 

• Engaging and Relevant First Sentence : The opening sentence captures the reader’s attention and relates directly to the topic. 
• Background Information : Enough background information is introduced to provide context for the thesis statement. 
• Definition of Important Terms : Key terms or concepts that might be unfamiliar to the audience or are central to the argument are defined. 
• Clear Thesis Statement : The thesis statement presents the main point or argument of the essay. 
• Relevance to Main Body : Everything in the introduction directly relates to and sets up the discussion in the main body of the essay. 

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Writing a strong introduction is crucial for setting the tone and context of your essay. Here are the key takeaways for how to write essay introduction: 3  

• Hook the Reader : Start with an engaging hook to grab the reader’s attention. This could be a compelling question, a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or an anecdote. 
• Provide Background : Give a brief overview of the topic, setting the context and stage for the discussion. 
• Thesis Statement : State your thesis, which is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be concise, clear, and specific. 
• Preview the Structure : Outline the main points or arguments to help the reader understand the organization of your essay. 
• Keep it Concise : Avoid including unnecessary details or information not directly related to your thesis. 
• Revise and Edit : Revise your introduction to ensure clarity, coherence, and relevance. Check for grammar and spelling errors. 
• Seek Feedback : Get feedback from peers or instructors to improve your introduction further. 

The purpose of an essay introduction is to give an overview of the topic, context, and main ideas of the essay. It is meant to engage the reader, establish the tone for the rest of the essay, and introduce the thesis statement or central argument.  

An essay introduction typically ranges from 5-10% of the total word count. For example, in a 1,000-word essay, the introduction would be roughly 50-100 words. However, the length can vary depending on the complexity of the topic and the overall length of the essay.

An essay introduction is critical in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. To ensure its effectiveness, consider incorporating these key elements: a compelling hook, background information, a clear thesis statement, an outline of the essay’s scope, a smooth transition to the body, and optional signposting sentences.  

The process of writing an essay introduction is not necessarily straightforward, but there are several strategies that can be employed to achieve this end. When experiencing difficulty initiating the process, consider the following techniques: begin with an anecdote, a quotation, an image, a question, or a startling fact to pique the reader’s interest. It may also be helpful to consider the five W’s of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how.   For instance, an anecdotal opening could be structured as follows: “As I ascended the stage, momentarily blinded by the intense lights, I could sense the weight of a hundred eyes upon me, anticipating my next move. The topic of discussion was climate change, a subject I was passionate about, and it was my first public speaking event. Little did I know , that pivotal moment would not only alter my perspective but also chart my life’s course.” 

Crafting a compelling thesis statement for your introduction paragraph is crucial to grab your reader’s attention. To achieve this, avoid using overused phrases such as “In this paper, I will write about” or “I will focus on” as they lack originality. Instead, strive to engage your reader by substantiating your stance or proposition with a “so what” clause. While writing your thesis statement, aim to be precise, succinct, and clear in conveying your main argument.  

To create an effective essay introduction, ensure it is clear, engaging, relevant, and contains a concise thesis statement. It should transition smoothly into the essay and be long enough to cover necessary points but not become overwhelming. Seek feedback from peers or instructors to assess its effectiveness. 

References  

• Cui, L. (2022). Unit 6 Essay Introduction.  Building Academic Writing Skills . 
• West, H., Malcolm, G., Keywood, S., & Hill, J. (2019). Writing a successful essay.  Journal of Geography in Higher Education ,  43 (4), 609-617. 
• Beavers, M. E., Thoune, D. L., & McBeth, M. (2023). Bibliographic Essay: Reading, Researching, Teaching, and Writing with Hooks: A Queer Literacy Sponsorship. College English, 85(3), 230-242. 

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• How to Write a Summary

Proficient students understand that  summarizing , identifying what is most important and restating the text (or other media) in your own words, is an important tool for college success.

After all, if you really know a subject, you will be able to summarize it. If you cannot summarize a subject, even if you have memorized all the facts about it, you can be absolutely sure that you have not learned it. And, if you truly learn the subject, you will still be able to summarize it months or years from now.

Proficient students may monitor their understanding of a text by summarizing as they read. They understand that if they can write a one- or two-sentence summary of each paragraph after reading it, then that is a good sign that they have correctly understood it. If they can not summarize the main idea of the paragraph, they know that comprehension has broken down and they need to use fix-up strategies to repair understanding.

Summary Writing Format

• When writing a summary, remember that it should be in the form of a paragraph.
• A summary begins with an introductory sentence that states the text’s title, author and main point of the text as you see it.
• A summary is written in your own words.
• A summary contains only the ideas of the original text. Do not insert any of your own opinions, interpretations, deductions or comments into a summary.
• Identify in order the significant sub-claims the author uses to defend the main point.
• Copy word-for-word three separate passages from the essay that you think support and/or defend the main point of the essay as you see it.
• Cite each passage by first signaling the work and the author, put “quotation marks” around the passage you chose, and put the number of the paragraph where the passages can be found immediately after the passage.
• Using source material from the essay is important. Why? Because defending claims with source material is what you will be asked to do when writing papers for your college professors.
• Write a last sentence that “wraps” up your summary; often a simple rephrasing of the main point.

Example Summary Writing Format

In the essay Santa Ana , author Joan Didion’s main point is ( state main point ). According to Didion “… passage 1 …” (para.3). Didion also writes “… passage 2 …” (para.8). Finally, she states “… passage 3 …” (para. 12) Write a last sentence that “wraps” up your summary; often a simple rephrasing of the main point.

• Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : http://lumenlearning.com/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Paul Powell. Provided by : Central Community College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Elisabeth Ellington and Ronda Dorsey Neugebauer. Provided by : Chadron State College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Table of Contents

Instructor Resources (Access Requires Login)

• Overview of Instructor Resources

An Overview of the Writing Process

• Introduction to the Writing Process
• Introduction to Writing
• Your Role as a Learner
• What is an Essay?
• Reading to Write
• Defining the Writing Process
• Videos: Prewriting Techniques
• Thesis Statements
• Organizing an Essay
• Creating Paragraphs
• Conclusions
• Editing and Proofreading
• Matters of Grammar, Mechanics, and Style
• Peer Review Checklist
• Comparative Chart of Writing Strategies

Using Sources

• Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism
• Formatting the Works Cited Page (MLA)
• Citing Paraphrases and Summaries (APA)
• APA Citation Style, 6th edition: General Style Guidelines

Definition Essay

• Definitional Argument Essay
• How to Write a Definition Essay
• Critical Thinking
• Video: Thesis Explained
• Effective Thesis Statements
• Student Sample: Definition Essay

Narrative Essay

• Introduction to Narrative Essay
• Student Sample: Narrative Essay
• "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell
• "Sixty-nine Cents" by Gary Shteyngart
• Video: The Danger of a Single Story
• How to Write an Annotation
• Writing for Success: Narration

Illustration/Example Essay

• Introduction to Illustration/Example Essay
• "She's Your Basic L.O.L. in N.A.D" by Perri Klass
• "April & Paris" by David Sedaris
• Writing for Success: Illustration/Example
• Student Sample: Illustration/Example Essay

Compare/Contrast Essay

• Introduction to Compare/Contrast Essay
• "Disability" by Nancy Mairs
• "Friending, Ancient or Otherwise" by Alex Wright
• "A South African Storm" by Allison Howard
• Writing for Success: Compare/Contrast
• Student Sample: Compare/Contrast Essay

Cause-and-Effect Essay

• Introduction to Cause-and-Effect Essay
• "Cultural Baggage" by Barbara Ehrenreich
• "Women in Science" by K.C. Cole
• Writing for Success: Cause and Effect
• Student Sample: Cause-and-Effect Essay

Argument Essay

• Introduction to Argument Essay
• Rogerian Argument
• "The Case Against Torture," by Alisa Soloman
• "The Case for Torture" by Michael Levin
• How to Write a Summary by Paraphrasing Source Material
• Writing for Success: Argument
• Student Sample: Argument Essay
• Grammar/Mechanics Mini-lessons
• Mini-lesson: Subjects and Verbs, Irregular Verbs, Subject Verb Agreement
• Mini-lesson: Sentence Types
• Mini-lesson: Fragments I
• Mini-lesson: Run-ons and Comma Splices I
• Mini-lesson: Comma Usage
• Mini-lesson: Parallelism
• Mini-lesson: The Apostrophe
• Mini-lesson: Capital Letters
• Grammar Practice - Interactive Quizzes
• De Copia - Demonstration of the Variety of Language
• Style Exercise: Voice

Introduction

Goals and Goal Setting

Goals Common to All RST Writers

Other Goals to Consider

Defining My Own Goals

Advice about Assignments

Getting Started: Listing Topics to Write about in the Tutorial

Narrative One: Personal Piece on a Significant Experience

Narrative Two: Academic Piece on a Significant Experience

Summary/Response One

Summary/Response Two

Tutorial Evaluation Postscript

On Using the Resources for Writers

Generating and Developing Ideas

Finding/Expressing Main Ideas

Showing v. Telling Sentences

Focusing Topic Sentences

Thesis Statements

Reading Strategies

Assessing Your Reading Strategies

Summarizing

Writing Effective Summary and Response Essays

Discourse Analysis Worksheet

Trade Magazines

Selecting Readings

A summary is a concise paraphrase of all the main ideas in an essay. It cites the author and the title (usually in the first sentence); it contains the essay's thesis and supporting ideas; it may use direct quotation of forceful or concise statements of the author's ideas; it will NOT usually cite the author's examples or supporting details unless they are central to the main idea. Most summaries present the major points in the order that the author made them and continually refer back to the article being summarized (i.e. "Damon argues that ..." or "Goodman also points out that ... "). The summary should take up no more than one-third the length of the work being summarized.

The Response:

A response is a critique or evaluation of the author's essay. Unlike the summary, it is composed of YOUR opinions in relation to the article being summarized. It examines ideas that you agree or disagree with and identifies the essay's strengths and weaknesses in reasoning and logic, in quality of supporting examples, and in organization and style. A good response is persuasive; therefore, it should cite facts, examples, and personal experience that either refutes or supports the article you're responding to, depending on your stance.

Two Typical Organizational Formats for Summary/Response Essays:

1. Present the summary in a block of paragraphs, followed by the response in a block:

Intro/thesis Summary (two to three paragraphs) Agreement (or disagreement) Disagreement (or agreement) Conclusion

Note: Some essays will incorporate both agreement and disagreement in a response, but this is not mandatory.

2. Introduce the essay with a short paragraph that includes your thesis. Then, each body paragraph summarizes one point and responds to it, and a conclusion wraps the essay up.

Intro/thesis Summary point one; agree/disagree Summary point two; agree/disagree Summary point three; agree/disagree Conclusion

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Summary/Response Essays: Overview

A summary/response essay may, at first, seem like a simplistic exercise for a college course. But the truth is that most academic writing requires us to successfully accomplish at least two tasks: summarizing what others have said and presenting what you have to say. Because of this, summarizing and responding are core skills that every writer should possess.

Being able to write an effective summary helps us make sense of what others have to say about a topic and how they choose to say it. As writers, we all need to make an effort to recognize, understand, and consider various perspectives about different issues. One way to do this is to accurately summarize what someone else has written, but accomplishing this requires us to first be active and engaged readers.

Along with the other methods covered in the Reading Critically chapter , writing a good summary requires taking good notes about the text. Your notes should include factual information from the text, but your notes might also capture your reactions to the text—these reactions can help you build a thoughtful and in-depth response.

Responding to a text is a crucial part of entering into an academic conversation. An effective summary proves you understand the text; your response allows you to draw on your own experiences and prior knowledge so that you can talk back to the text.

As you read, make notes, and summarize a text, you’ll undoubtedly have immediate reactions. Perhaps you agree with almost everything or find yourself frustrated by what the author writes. Taking those reactions and putting them into a piece of academic writing can be challenging because our personal reactions are based on our history, culture, opinions, and prior knowledge of the topic. However, an academic audience will expect you to have good reasons for the ways you have responded to a text, so it’s your responsibility to critically reflect on how you have reacted and why.

The ability to recognize and distinguish between types of ideas is key to successful critical reading.

Types of Ideas You Will Encounter When Reading a Text

• Fact: an observable, verifiable idea or phenomenon
• Opinion: a judgment based on fact
• Belief: a conviction or judgment based on culture or values
• Prejudice: an opinion (judgment) based on logical fallacies or on incorrect, insufficient information

After you have encountered these types of ideas when reading a text, your next job will be to consider how to respond to what you’ve read.

Four Ways to Respond to a Text

• Reflection. Did the author teach you something new? Perhaps they made you look at something familiar in a different way.
• Agreement. Did the author write a convincing argument? Were their claims solid, and supported by credible evidence?
• Disagreement. Do you have personal experiences, opinions, or knowledge that lead you to different conclusions than the author? Do your opinions about the same facts differ?
• Note Omissions. If you have experience with or prior knowledge on the topic, you may be able to identify important points that the author failed to include or fully address.

You might also analyze how the author has organized the text and what the author’s purposes might be, topics covered in the Reading Critically chapter .

Key Features

A brief summary of the text.

Include Publication Information. An effective summary includes the author’s name, the text’s title, the place of publication, and the date of publication—usually in the opening lines.

Identify Main Idea and Supporting Ideas. The main idea includes both the topic of the text and the author’s argument, claim, or perspective. Supporting ideas help the author demonstrate why their argument or claim is true. Supporting ideas may also help the audience understand the topic better, or they may be used to persuade the audience to agree with the author’s viewpoints.

Make Connections Between Ideas. Remember that a summary is not a bullet-point list of the ideas in a text. In order to give your audience a complete idea of what the author intended to say, you need to explain how ideas in the text are related to one another. Consider using transition phrases.

Be Objective and Accurate. Along with being concise, a summary should be a description of a text, not an evaluation. While you may have strong feelings about what the author wrote, your goal in a summary is to objectively capture what was written. Additionally, a summary needs to accurately represent the ideas, opinions, facts, and judgments presented in a text. Don’t misrepresent or manipulate the author’s words.

Do Not Include Quotes. Summaries are short. The purpose of a summary is for you to describe a text in your own words . For this reason, you should focus on paraphrasing rather than including direct quotes from the text in your summary.

Thoughtful and Respectful Response to the Text

Consider Your Reactions. Your response will be built on your reactions to the text, so you need to carefully consider what reactions you had and how you can capture those reactions in writing.

Organize Your Reactions. Dumping all of your reactions onto the page might be useful to just get your ideas out, but it won’t be useful for a reader. You need to organize your reactions. For example, you might develop sections that focus on where you agree with the author, where you disagree, how the author uses rhetoric, and so on.

Create a Conversation. Avoid the trap of writing a response that is too much about your ideas and not enough about the author’s ideas. Your response should remain engaged with the author’s ideas. Keep the conversation alive by making sure you regularly reference the author’s key points as you talk back to the text.

Be Respectful. We live in an age when it’s very easy to anonymously air our grievances online, and we’ve seen how Reddit boards, YouTube comments, and Twitter threads can quickly devolve into disrespectful, toxic spaces. In a summary/response essay, as in other academic writing, you are not required to agree with everything an author writes—but you should state your objections and reactions respectfully. Imagine the author is standing in front of you, and write your response as if you value and respect their ideas as much as you would like them to value and respect yours.

Distinguish Between an Author’s Ideas and Your Own

Signal Phrases. A summary/response essay, especially your response, will include a mix of an author’s ideas and your ideas. It’s important that you clearly distinguish which ideas in your essay are yours, which are the author’s, and even others’ ideas that the author might be citing. Signal phrases are how you accomplish this. Remember to use the author’s last name and an accurate verb.

Examples of Signal Phrases

Poor Signal Phrases: “They say…” “The article states…” “The author says…”

Effective Signal Phrases: “Smith argues…” “Baez believes…” “Henning references Chan Wong’s research about…”

Drafting Checklists

These questions should help guide you through the stages of drafting your summary/response essay.

• Have you identified all the necessary publication information for the text that you will need for your summary?
• Have you identified the text’s main ideas and supporting ideas?
• What were your initial reactions to the text?
• What new perspectives do you have on the topic covered in the text?
• Do you ultimately agree or disagree with the author’s points? A little of both?
• Has the author omitted any points or ideas they should have covered?
• Has the author organized their text effectively for their purpose?
• Have they used rhetoric effectively for their audience?
• Have your reactions to the text changed since you first read it? Why or why not?

Writing and Revising

• Does your summary clearly tell your reader the author’s name, the text’s title, the place of publication, and the publication data?
• Has your summary effectively informed your reader about the text’s main ideas and supporting ideas? Have you made the connections between those ideas clear for your reader by using effective transition phrases?
• Would your reader think your summary is objective and accurate?
• You haven’t included any quotes in your summary, right?
• Does your response present your reactions to the text in an organized way that will make sense to your reader?
• Does your response create a conversation between you and the author by regularly referencing ideas from the text?
• Would your reader think that your response is respectful of the author’s ideas, opinions, and beliefs?
• Have you used signal phrases to help your reader recognize which ideas are the author’s and which ideas are yours?
• Have you carefully proofread your essay to correct any grammar, mechanics, punctuation, and spelling errors?
• Have you formatted your document appropriately and used citations when necessary?

Sources Used to Create this Chapter

Parts of this chapter were remixed from:

• First-Year Composition by Leslie Davis and Kiley Miller, which was published under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Starting the Journey: An Intro to College Writing Copyright © by Leonard Owens III; Tim Bishop; and Scott Ortolano is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write a Summary (Examples Included)

By Ashley Shaw

Have you ever recommended a book to someone and given them a quick overview? Then you’ve created a summary before!

Summarizing is a common part of everyday communication. It feels easy when you’re recounting what happened on your favorite show, but what do you do when the information gets a little more complex?

Written summaries come with their own set of challenges. You might ask yourself:

• What details are unnecessary?
• How do you put this in your own words without changing the meaning?
• How close can you get to the original without plagiarizing it?
• How long should it be?

The answers to these questions depend on the type of summary you are doing and why you are doing it.

A summary in an academic setting is different to a professional summary—and both of those are very different to summarizing a funny story you want to tell your friends.

One thing they all have in common is that you need to relay information in the clearest way possible to help your reader understand. We’ll look at some different forms of summary, and give you some tips on each.

Let’s get started!

What Is a Summary?

How do you write a summary, how do you write an academic summary, what are the four types of academic summaries, how do i write a professional summary, writing or telling a summary in personal situations, summarizing summaries.

A summary is a shorter version of a larger work. Summaries are used at some level in almost every writing task, from formal documents to personal messages.

When you write a summary, you have an audience that doesn’t know every single thing you know.

When you want them to understand your argument, topic, or stance, you may need to explain some things to catch them up.

Instead of having them read the article or hear every single detail of the story or event, you instead give them a brief overview of what they need to know.

Academic, professional, and personal summaries each require you to consider different things, but there are some key rules they all have in common.

Let’s go over a few general guides to writing a summary first.

1. A summary should always be shorter than the original work, usually considerably.

Even if your summary is the length of a full paper, you are likely summarizing a book or other significantly longer work.

2. A summary should tell the reader the highlights of what they need to know without giving them unnecessary details.

3. It should also include enough details to give a clear and honest picture.

For example, if you summarize an article that says “ The Office is the greatest television show of all time,” but don’t mention that they are specifically referring to sitcoms, then you changed the meaning of the article. That’s a problem! Similarly, if you write a summary of your job history and say you volunteered at a hospital for the last three years, but you don’t add that you only went twice in that time, it becomes a little dishonest.

4. Summaries shouldn’t contain personal opinion.

While in the longer work you are creating you might use opinion, within the summary itself, you should avoid all personal opinion. A summary is different than a review. In this moment, you aren’t saying what you think of the work you are summarizing, you are just giving your audience enough information to know what the work says or did.

Now that we have a good idea of what summaries are in general, let’s talk about some specific types of summary you will likely have to do at some point in your writing life.

An academic summary is one you will create for a class or in other academic writing. The exact elements you will need to include depend on the assignment itself.

However, when you’re asked for an academic summary, this usually this means one of five things, all of which are pretty similar:

• You need to do a presentation in which you talk about an article, book, or report.
• You write a summary paper in which the entire paper is a summary of a specific work.
• You summarize a class discussion, lesson, or reading in the form of personal notes or a discussion board post.
• You do something like an annotated bibliography where you write short summaries of multiple works in preparation of a longer assignment.
• You write quick summaries within the body of another assignment . For example, in an argumentative essay, you will likely need to have short summaries of the sources you use to explain their argument before getting into how the source helps you prove your point.

Regardless of what type of summary you are doing, though, there are a few steps you should always follow:

• Skim the work you are summarizing before you read it. Notice what stands out to you.
• Next, read it in depth . Do the same things stand out?
• Put the full text away and write in a few sentences what the main idea or point was.
• Go back and compare to make sure you didn’t forget anything.
• Expand on this to write and then edit your summary.

Each type of academic summary requires slightly different things. Let’s get down to details.

How Do I Write a Summary Paper?

Sometimes teachers assign something called a summary paper . In this, the entire thing is a summary of one article, book, story, or report.

To understand how to write this paper, let’s talk a little bit about the purpose of such an assignment.

A summary paper is usually given to help a teacher see how well a student understands a reading assignment, but also to help the student digest the reading. Sometimes, it can be difficult to understand things we read right away.

However, a good way to process the information is to put it in our own words. That is the point of a summary paper.

A summary paper is:

• A way to explain in our own words what happened in a paper, book, etc.
• A time to think about what was important in the paper, etc.
• A time to think about the meaning and purpose behind the paper, etc.

Here are some things that a summary paper is not:

• A review. Your thoughts and opinions on the thing you are summarizing don’t need to be here unless otherwise specified.
• A comparison. A comparison paper has a lot of summary in it, but it is different than a summary paper. In this, you are just saying what happened, but you aren’t saying places it could have been done differently.
• A paraphrase (though you might have a little paraphrasing in there). In the section on using summary in longer papers, I talk more about the difference between summaries, paraphrases, and quotes.

Because a summary paper is usually longer than other forms of summary, you will be able to chose more detail. However, it still needs to focus on the important events. Summary papers are usually shorter papers.

Let’s say you are writing a 3–4 page summary. You are likely summarizing a full book or an article or short story, which will be much longer than 3–4 pages.

Imagine that you are the author of the work, and your editor comes to you and says they love what you wrote, but they need it to be 3–4 pages instead.

How would you tell that story (argument, idea, etc.) in that length without losing the heart or intent behind it? That is what belongs in a summary paper.

How Do I Write Useful Academic Notes?

Sometimes, you need to write a summary for yourself in the form of notes or for your classmates in the form of a discussion post.

You might not think you need a specific approach for this. After all, only you are going to see it.

However, summarizing for yourself can sometimes be the most difficult type of summary. If you try to write down everything your teacher says, your hand will cramp and you’ll likely miss a lot.

Yet, transcribing doesn’t work because studies show that writing things down (not typing them) actually helps you remember them better.

So how do you find the balance between summarizing the lessons without leaving out important points?

There are some tips for this:

• If your professor writes it on the board, it is probably important.
• What points do your textbooks include when summarizing information? Use these as a guide.
• Write the highlight of every X amount of time, with X being the time you can go without missing anything or getting tired. This could be one point per minute, or three per five minutes, etc.

How Do I Create an Annotated Biography?

An annotated bibliography requires a very specific style of writing. Often, you will write these before a longer research paper . They will ask you to find a certain amount of articles and write a short annotation for each of them.

While an annotation is more than just a summary, it usually starts with a summary of the work. This will be about 2–3 sentences long. Because you don’t have a lot of room, you really have to think about what the most important thing the work says is.

This will basically ask you to explain the point of the article in these couple of sentences, so you should focus on the main point when expressing it.

Here is an example of a summary section within an annotation about this post:

“In this post, the author explains how to write a summary in different types of settings. She walks through academic, professional, and personal summaries. Ultimately, she claims that summaries should be short explanations that get the audience caught up on the topic without leaving out details that would change the meaning.”

Can I Write a Summary Within an Essay?

Perhaps the most common type of summary you will ever do is a short summary within a longer paper.

For example, if you have to write an argumentative essay, you will likely need to use sources to help support your argument.

However, there is a good chance that your readers won’t have read those same sources.

So, you need to give them enough detail to understand your topic without spending too much time explaining and not enough making your argument.

While this depends on exactly how you are using summary in your paper, often, a good amount of summary is the same amount you would put in an annotation.

Just a few sentences will allow the reader to get an idea of the work before moving on to specific parts of it that might help your argument.

What’s the Difference Between Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Using Quotes?

One important thing to recognize when using summaries in academic settings is that summaries are different than paraphrases or quotes.

A summary is broader and more general. A paraphrase, on the other hand, puts specific parts into your own words. A quote uses the exact words of the original. All of them, however, need to be cited.

Let’s look at an example:

Take these words by Thomas J. Watson:

”Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t as all. You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where you will find success.”

Let’s say I was told to write a summary, a paraphrase, and a quote about this statement. This is what it might look like:

Summary: Thomas J. Watson said that the key to success is actually to fail more often. (This is broad and doesn’t go into details about what he says, but it still gives him credit.)

Paraphrase: Thomas J. Watson, on asking if people would like his formula for success, said that the secret was to fail twice as much. He claimed that when you decide to learn from your mistakes instead of being disappointed by them, and when you start making a lot of them, you will actually find more success. (This includes most of the details, but it is in my own words, while still crediting the source.)

Quote: Thomas J. Watson said, ”Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where you will find success.” (This is the exact words of the original with quotation marks and credit given.)

Avoiding Plagiarism

One of the hardest parts about summarizing someone else’s writing is avoiding plagiarism .

That’s why I have a few rules/tips for you when summarizing anything:

1. Always cite.

If you are talking about someone else’s work in any means, cite your source. If you are summarizing the entire work, all you probably need to do (depending on style guidelines) is say the author’s name. However, if you are summarizing a specific chapter or section, you should state that specifically. Finally, you should make sure to include it in your Work Cited or Reference page.

2. Change the wording.

Sometimes when people are summarizing or paraphrasing a work, they get too close to the original, and actually use the exact words. Unless you use quotation marks, this is plagiarism. However, a good way to avoid this is to hide the article while you are summarizing it. If you don’t have it in front of you, you are less likely to accidentally use the exact words. (However, after you are done, double check that you didn’t miss anything important or give wrong details.)

3. Use a plagiarism checker.

Of course, when you are writing any summary, especially academic summaries, it can be easy to cross the line into plagiarism. If this is a place where you struggle, then ProWritingAid can help.

Just use our Plagiarism Report . It’ll highlight any unoriginal text in your document so you can make sure you are citing everything correctly and summarizing in your own words.

Find out more about ProWritingAid plagiarism bundles.

Along with academic summaries, you might sometimes need to write professional summaries. Often, this means writing a summary about yourself that shows why you are qualified for a position or organization.

In this section, let’s talk about two types of professional summaries: a LinkedIn summary and a summary section within a resume.

How Do I Write My LinkedIn Bio?

LinkedIn is all about professional networking. It offers you a chance to share a brief glimpse of your professional qualifications in a paragraph or two.

This can then be sent to professional connections, or even found by them without you having to reach out. This can help you get a job or build your network.

Your summary is one of the first things a future employer might see about you, and how you write yours can make you stand out from the competition.

Here are some tips on writing a LinkedIn summary :

• Before you write it, think about what you want it to do . If you are looking for a job, what kind of job? What have you done in your past that would stand out to someone hiring for that position? That is what you will want to focus on in your summary.
• Be professional . Unlike many social media platforms, LinkedIn has a reputation for being more formal. Your summary should reflect that to some extent.
• Use keywords . Your summary is searchable, so using keywords that a recruiter might be searching for can help them find you.
• Focus on the start . LinkedIn shows the first 300 characters automatically, and then offers the viewer a chance to read more. Make that start so good that everyone wants to keep reading.
• Focus on accomplishments . Think of your life like a series of albums, and this is your speciality “Greatest Hits” album. What “songs” are you putting on it?

How Do I Summarize My Experience on a Resume?

Writing a professional summary for a resume is different than any other type of summary that you may have to do.

Recruiters go through a lot of resumes every day. They don’t have time to spend ages reading yours, which means you have to wow them quickly.

To do that, you might include a section at the top of your resume that acts almost as an elevator pitch: That one thing you might say to a recruiter to get them to want to talk to you if you only had a 30-second elevator ride.

If you don’t have a lot of experience, though, you might want to skip this section entirely and focus on playing up the experience you do have.

Outside of academic and personal summaries, you use summary a lot in your day-to-day life.

Whether it is telling a good piece of trivia you just learned or a funny story that happened to you, or even setting the stage in creative writing, you summarize all the time.

How you use summary can be an important consideration in whether people want to read your work (or listen to you talk).

Here are some things to think about when telling a story:

• Pick interesting details . Too many and your point will be lost. Not enough, and you didn’t paint the scene or give them a complete idea about what happened.
• Play into the emotions . When telling a story, you want more information than the bare minimum. You want your reader to get the emotion of the story. That requires a little bit more work to accomplish.
• Focus. A summary of one story can lead to another can lead to another. Think about storytellers that you know that go off on a tangent. They never seem to finish one story without telling 100 others!

To wrap up (and to demonstrate everything I just talked about), let’s summarize this post into its most essential parts:

A summary is a great way to quickly give your audience the information they need to understand the topic you are discussing without having to know every detail.

How you write a summary is different depending on what type of summary you are doing:

• An academic summary usually gets to the heart of an article, book, or journal, and it should highlight the main points in your own words. How long it should be depends on the type of assignment it is.
• A professional summary highlights you and your professional, academic, and volunteer history. It shows people in your professional network who you are and why they should hire you, work with you, use your talents, etc.

Being able to tell a good story is another form of summary. You want to tell engaging anecdotes and facts without boring your listeners. This is a skill that is developed over time.

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Ashley Shaw is a former editor and marketer/current PhD student and teacher. When she isn't studying con artists for her dissertation, she's thinking of new ways to help college students better understand and love the writing process. You can follow her on Twitter, or, if you prefer animal accounts, follow her rabbits, Audrey Hopbun and Fredra StaHare, on Instagram.

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How to write a summary.

Proficient students understand that  summarizing , identifying what is most important and restating the text (or other media) in your own words, is an important tool for college success.

After all, if you really know a subject, you will be able to summarize it. If you cannot summarize a subject, even if you have memorized all the facts about it, you can be absolutely sure that you have not learned it. And, if you truly learn the subject, you will still be able to summarize it months or years from now.

Proficient students may monitor their understanding of a text by summarizing as they read. They understand that if they can write a one- or two-sentence summary of each paragraph after reading it, then that is a good sign that they have correctly understood it. If they can not summarize the main idea of the paragraph, they know that comprehension has broken down and they need to use fix-up strategies to repair understanding.

Summary Writing Format

• When writing a summary, remember that it should be in the form of a paragraph.
• A summary begins with an introductory sentence that states the text’s title, author and main point of the text as you see it.
• A summary is written in your own words.
• A summary contains only the ideas of the original text. Do not insert any of your own opinions, interpretations, deductions or comments into a summary.
• Identify in order the significant sub-claims the author uses to defend the main point.
• Copy word-for-word three separate passages from the essay that you think support and/or defend the main point of the essay as you see it.
• Cite each passage by first signaling the work and the author, put “quotation marks” around the passage you chose, and put the number of the paragraph where the passages can be found immediately after the passage.
• Using source material from the essay is important. Why? Because defending claims with source material is what you will be asked to do when writing papers for your college professors.
• Write a last sentence that “wraps” up your summary; often a simple rephrasing of the main point.

Example Summary Writing Format

In the essay Santa Ana , author Joan Didion’s main point is ( state main point ). According to Didion “… passage 1 …” (para.3). Didion also writes “… passage 2 …” (para.8). Finally, she states “… passage 3 …” (para. 12) Write a last sentence that “wraps” up your summary; often a simple rephrasing of the main point.

• Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : http://lumenlearning.com/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Paul Powell. Provided by : Central Community College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Elisabeth Ellington and Ronda Dorsey Neugebauer. Provided by : Chadron State College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution

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How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

Published on 25 September 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 12 May 2023.

Summarising , or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.

There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:

• Read the text
• Break it down into sections
• Identify the key points in each section
• Write the summary
• Check the summary against the article

Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or analysing the source. You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).

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Table of contents

When to write a summary, step 1: read the text, step 2: break the text down into sections, step 3: identify the key points in each section, step 4: write the summary, step 5: check the summary against the article, frequently asked questions.

There are many situations in which you might have to summarise an article or other source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
• To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
• To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

When you’re writing an academic text like an essay , research paper , or dissertation , you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.

But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyse or critique it.

In any case, the goal of summarising is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

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You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it. It’s often effective to read in three stages:

• Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
• Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you read.
• Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any particularly important or difficult passages.

There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:

• Start by reading the abstract . This already contains the author’s own summary of their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
• Pay attention to headings and subheadings . These should give you a good sense of what each part is about.
• Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?

To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organised into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction, methods, results, and discussion.

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part.

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement —the central claim that the author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of the author’s key points.

Examples of article summaries

Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarise this article , which scientifically investigates the old saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’.

An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an article.

For example, in a literature review or research paper, you may want to briefly summarize this study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style , but it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation generators.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

• You’ve accurately represented the author’s work
• You haven’t missed any essential information
• The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarising many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.

A summary is a short overview of the main points of an article or other source, written entirely in your own words.

Save yourself some time with the free summariser.

A summary is always much shorter than the original text. The length of a summary can range from just a few sentences to several paragraphs; it depends on the length of the article you’re summarising, and on the purpose of the summary.

With the summariser tool you can easily adjust the length of your summary.

You might have to write a summary of a source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to prove you understand the material
• For your own use, to keep notes on your reading
• To provide an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
• In a paper , to summarise or introduce a relevant study

To avoid plagiarism when summarising an article or other source, follow these two rules:

• Write the summary entirely in your own words by   paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
• Reference the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

An abstract concisely explains all the key points of an academic text such as a thesis , dissertation or journal article. It should summarise the whole text, not just introduce it.

An abstract is a type of summary , but summaries are also written elsewhere in academic writing . For example, you might summarise a source in a paper , in a literature review , or as a standalone assignment.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, May 12). How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 3 September 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/working-sources/how-to-write-a-summary/

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Other students also liked, how to paraphrase | step-by-step guide & examples, how to quote | citing quotes in harvard & apa, apa referencing (7th ed.) quick guide | in-text citations & references.

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How to Write an Essay Introduction

Last Updated: January 15, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 4,237,919 times.

The introduction of your essay serves two important purposes. First, it gets your reader interested in the topic and encourages them to read what you have to say about it. Second, it gives your reader a roadmap of what you're going to say and the overarching point you're going to make – your thesis statement. A powerful introduction grabs your reader's attention and keeps them reading.

Sample Essay Hooks & Introductions

Hooking Your Reader

• If you're writing a paper for a class, don't automatically assume your instructor is your audience. If you write directly to your instructor, you'll end up glossing over some information that is necessary to show that you properly understand the subject of your essay.
• It can be helpful to reverse-engineer your audience based on the subject matter of your essay. For example, if you're writing an essay about a women's health issue for a women's studies class, you might identify your audience as young women within the age range most affected by the issue.

• For this hook to be effective, your fact needs to be sufficiently surprising. If you're not sure, test it on a few friends. If they react by expressing shock or surprise, you know you've got something good.
• Use a fact or statistic that sets up your essay, not something you'll be using as evidence to prove your thesis statement. Facts or statistics that demonstrate why your topic is important (or should be important) to your audience typically make good hooks.

• For example, if you were writing an essay proposing a change to drunk driving laws, you might open with a story of how the life of a victim was changed forever after they were hit by a drunk driver.

• For example, if you're writing an essay about a public figure, you might include an anecdote about an odd personal habit that cleverly relates back to your thesis statement.
• Particularly with less formal papers or personal essays, humorous anecdotes can be particularly effective hooks.

• For example: "What would you do if you could play God for a day? That's exactly what the leaders of the tiny island nation of Guam tried to answer."
• If your essay prompt was a question, don't just repeat it in your paper. Make sure to come up with your own intriguing question.

• Broad, sweeping generalizations may ring false with some readers and alienate them from the start. For example, "everyone wants someone to love" would alienate someone who identified as aromantic or asexual.

Creating Your Context

• Use an appropriate transitional word or phrase, such as "however" or "similarly," to move from your specific anecdote back out to a broader scope.
• For example, if you related a story about one individual, but your essay isn't about them, you can relate the hook back to the larger topic with a sentence like "Tommy wasn't alone, however. There were more than 200,000 dockworkers affected by that union strike."

• For example, if your thesis relates to how blackface was used as a means of enforcing racial segregation, your introduction would describe what blackface performances were, and where and when they occurred.
• If you are writing an argumentative paper, make sure to explain both sides of the argument in a neutral or objective manner.

• Definitions would be particularly important if your essay is discussing a scientific topic, where some scientific terminology might not be understood by the average layperson.
• Definitions also come in handy in legal or political essays, where a term may have different meanings depending on the context in which they are used.

• If you're using 2 or 3 sentences to describe the context for your thesis, try to make each sentence a bit more specific than the one before it. Draw your reader in gradually.
• For example, if you're writing an essay about drunk driving fatalities, you might start with an anecdote about a particular victim. Then you could provide national statistics, then narrow it down further to statistics for a particular gender or age group.

Presenting Your Thesis

• For example, a thesis for an essay on blackface performance might be "Because of its humiliating and demoralizing effect on African American slaves, blackface was used less as a comedy routine and more as a way of enforcing racial segregation."
• Be assertive and confident in your writing. Avoid including fluff such as "In this essay, I will attempt to show...." Instead, dive right in and make your claim, bold and proud.
• Your outline should be specific, unique, and provable. Through your essay, you'll make points that will show that your thesis statement is true – or at least persuade your readers that it's most likely true.

• If you've created an outline for your essay, this sentence is essentially the main subjects of each paragraph of the body of your essay.
• For example, if you're writing an essay about the unification of Italy, you might list 3 obstacles to unification. In the body of your essay, you would discuss details about how each of those obstacles was addressed or overcome.
• Instead of just listing all of your supporting points, sum them up by stating "how" or "why" your thesis is true. For example, instead of saying, "Phones should be banned from classrooms because they distract students, promote cheating, and make too much noise," you might say "Phones should be banned from classrooms because they act as an obstacle to learning."

• To figure out if you need a transition sentence, read the introduction and the first paragraph out loud. If you find yourself pausing or stumbling between the paragraphs, work in a transition to make the move smoother.
• You can also have friends or family members read your easy. If they feel it's choppy or jumps from the introduction into the essay, see what you can do to smooth it out.

Bringing It All Together

• If you're writing your essay for a class assignment, ask your instructor for examples of well-written essays that you can look at. Take note of conventions that are commonly used by writers in that discipline.
• Make a brief outline of the essay based on the information presented in the introduction. Then look at that outline as you read the essay to see how the essay follows it to prove the writer's thesis statement.

• For shorter essays under 1,000 words, keep your introduction to 1 paragraph, between 100 and 200 words.
• Always follow your instructor's guidelines for length. These rules can vary at times based on genre or form of writing.

• As you write your essay, you may want to jot down things you want to include in your introduction. For example, you may realize that you're using a particular term that you need to define in your introduction.

• Delete any filler or unnecessary language. Given the shortness of the introduction, every sentence should be essential to your reader's understanding of your essay.

• The first sentence or two should be your hook, designed to grab your reader's attention and get them interested in reading your essay.
• The next couple of sentences create a bridge between your hook and the overall topic of the rest of your essay.
• End your introduction with your thesis statement and a list of the points you will make in your essay to support or prove your thesis statement.

Expert Q&A

• If you are answering or responding to an assigned question, make sure you've interpreted the question correctly. The quality of your writing is irrelevant if your essay doesn't answer the question. Thanks Helpful 7 Not Helpful 1
• Have friends or family members read your essay and provide you with feedback. If you're writing for a class, you might want to exchange essays with another classmate and give each other feedback on your work. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 1

Tips from our Readers

• Reread your intro after writing each section to make sure both the intro and section are relevant to each other and to the paper.
• A sharp, descriptive title is sometimes just as important as an intro!

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/audience/
• ↑ http://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/planning/intros-and-conclusions/
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-an-introduction/
• ↑ https://www.esu.edu/writing-studio/guides/hook.cfm
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/introductions/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/cliches/
• ↑ Jake Adams. Academic Tutor & Test Prep Specialist. Expert Interview. 20 May 2020.
• ↑ https://library.sacredheart.edu/c.php?g=29803&p=185917
• ↑ https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/introductions-conclusions
• ↑ https://lsa.umich.edu/sweetland/undergraduates/writing-guides/how-do-i-write-an-intro--conclusion----body-paragraph.html
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/transitions/
• ↑ https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/planning/intros-and-conclusions/

About This Article

Start your introduction with a relevant story, fact, or quote that will engage readers. Then, add 2-3 sentences of background information to give your essay context, and include important dates, locations, or historical moments where applicable. Finally, include your thesis statement, which is a specific, arguable, and provable statement that answers a question about your essay topic. For example, your thesis might read: "In the modern age, online dating apps like Tinder provide a wider variety of romantic options than young people have ever had before." For more tips and examples on how to craft your thesis and put your introduction together, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Write a Summary for Essays, Articles, and Books

As you’ve already guessed, today’s blog post is the ultimate guide on how to write a summary for different papers.

Not only will you learn about four academic summary types, their purpose, and their proper formatting, but you’ll also master the art of summary writing step by step and get answers to all the frequently asked questions on the topic.

Here we go! (It won’t take much time, we promise.)

Table of Contents:

• What is a summary?
• Descriptive vs. evaluative summaries
• How to write a summary, step by step
• Four types of academic summaries: writing tips
• How to format a summary
• Frequently asked questions

What is a Summary?

In plain English, it’s a brief paragraph summarizing a bigger work: an article, a scientific paper, a book, a movie’s plot, etc. The purpose is to give the reader a comprehensive understanding of the asset:

You gather the main ideas of an essay , a book, a film, etc., and provide the overview for the reader to know what it’s about. You mention critical details and information there but avoid sharing your personal opinion about the work.

It’s also critical to understand the difference between a summary and an abstract :

An abstract is a summary type , used when writing academic texts like theses, dissertations, and research journal articles. It summarizes the whole text in the very beginning. Like this:

A summary works elsewhere in academic writing:

It can be a stand-alone assignment or a part of your essay, book critique , literature review, annotated bibliography, etc.

When writing an academic paper , summaries can be your way to integrate sources: Besides using quotes or paraphrases from the original text, you can provide an overview of the whole text before analyzing it.

Below is an example of a summary overviewing this work :

Descriptive vs. Evaluative Summaries

It’s also worth noting that summaries can be of two types: descriptive and evaluative. In most cases, you’ll write descriptive summaries while in school or college; however, a teacher can assign an evaluative summary as a stand-alone task to check your critical thinking or analysis skills.

What’s the difference between these two summary types?

• You write a descriptive summary to tell the reader about the content of the original text. The focus is on the main points and critical supporting details; you convey the work’s essential elements via a concise description without expressing your opinion on it.

Usually, descriptive summaries go as a part of assignments in college. They are short paragraphs you mention in essays or reviews before analyzing them, or you place summaries in your annotated bibliographies when telling about the sources you used to craft your paper.

• You write an evaluative summary to examine the original text’s usefulness, argumentation, and other elements. While the facts about the original texts are still present here (the author, the title, and the main points), evaluative summaries are also opinion-heavy. You evaluate the original, detailing your perception of its purpose, intended audience, usefulness, etc.

Usually, evaluative summaries go as stand-alone assignments like, say, rhetorical precis . They are longer works than typical descriptive summaries because they involve extensive explanations where you examine the author’s points and evaluate them.

How to Write a Summary: 7 Short Steps

And now, to business:

Here’s how to write a summary, step by step. Not only will it save your time and increase the effectiveness of your study, but it will also help develop good note-focus thinking, speed up the learning process, and understand the material better.

The 7 steps in writing a summary are:

• Read the original
• Get the main idea
• Reread, take notes
• Organize notes
• Write a thesis
• Write a summary draft
• Proofread and revise if necessary

1 – Read the Original

The first step is the most obvious: Read the original text you’ll need to summarize later. Do not take notes while reading; your goal is to get the writer’s style and tone and grasp the main idea (s) they convey.

Read it two times if necessary. Practice smart reading here: You should understand the author’s point and the problems covered.

2- Get the Main Idea

Once done, take your time and analyze what you’ve read. You need to identify the original text’s main idea (central point); otherwise, you won’t be able to summarize the work.

How to identify the main idea?

Three ways:

• Eliminate minor details and examples so you wouldn’t mistake them for main ideas. The 5Ws rule can help here: find the “what, who, when, why, and where” of the text to identify its core elements.
• Identify the order in which the author presents the information. It can be two methods: (1) main idea – example, when a point goes first and its clarification – afterward; (2) example – main idea, when the author introduces cues together with a point.
• Make a guess at which is the main idea, and then check whether the original text’s details support it.

3 – Reread, Take Notes

Now it’s time for active reading. You’ve identified the main ideas and points, so reread the original text again and note what you’ll include in your summary.

Ensure you separate facts from opinions. Highlight the topic sentences, critical quotes, data, and events.

4 – Organize Notes

For efficient summary writing, it would help to organize notes so you could indicate relationships between pieces of information. Feel free to try the following methods:

List the main idea (s), with numbered or bullet points for supporting details; it will make the outline clear .

• Diagrammatic layout

Super useful for future recall, it represents the essential relationship between the man and supporting ideas. Here’s how to organize notes with this method:

This one is among the most popular ways to visualize research : You place the main topic at the center, craft the supporting details around it, and extend less important information further in branches. Like this:

5 – Write a Thesis

In summary, a thesis statement goes for a one-sentence claim highlighting the original text’s main idea. It demonstrates that you understand the original.

Generating a thesis is critical, especially if you write a book summary. Our free online tool can make this process easier for you.

6 – Write a Summary Draft

Use your thesis statement as the first sentence of your summary. Remember that you write a short version of a larger work: Stick to the 1/4 length of the original.

Consider linking words to maintain the information flow, and remember that you write in your own words. Use a so-called “summarizing language” reminding the reader it’s a summary. Try phrases like “The author suggests,” “The article claims,” etc.

Avoid direct quotes; paraphrase, not plagiarize .

Stay objective: Describe, not evaluate or share your opinion about the work. Write a summary in the present tense.

What to include in a summary:

• An opening line listing the author’s name, work title, and overall idea
• Main points or ideas the author conveys. Avoid tiny details; there’s no need to provide every aspect of the original text in your summary
• A closing line where you restate the overview in one sentence

7 – Proofread and Revise If Necessary

Now that your summary is ready, do your best to edit it before submitting it to a professor. Reread the draft several times and make changes if necessary. Don’t hesitate to ask someone to check your summary and provide feedback.

Professional editing service is worth trying if you are still unsure if your paper is A-worthy.

The checklist to consider while revising:

• Your summary has a title.
• The summary is short.
• You’ve covered all the critical points from the original text.
• You’ve used your own words: There are no direct quotes or plagiarism.
• Your summary doesn’t include your own ideas, opinions, or interpretations.

Also, remember to proofread your summary to prevent tiny typos and grammar mistakes.

Four Types of Academic Summaries: Writing Tips

As you’ve already got it (we hope!), summaries can be different: descriptive and evaluative, super short or longer — they highlight the original work’s essence for the reader to understand the meaning without unnecessary details.

Speaking of the academic world, four main types of summaries exist:

• Summary papers
• Annotated bibliographies
• Academic notes
• Summaries within essays

Each of them requires slightly different things. Below are the details:

1 – Summary Papers

A summary paper is longer than other forms of summary: It reminds a descriptive essay where your entire work is a summary of the original text: an article, a book, or a report.

Your teacher can ask you to write a summary paper to see how well you understand a reading assignment. The point is to help you digest reading so you can tell about it in your own words.

While summary papers are longer than other types of academic summaries, you can describe more details there but still focus on the most critical ones. As a rule, this summary is 1/4 length of the original text. Thus, if you need to summarize the full book, your paper may be 3-4 pages long.

2 – Annotated Bibliographies

An annotated bibliography is a list of sources you’ve used for research, with a short paragraph about each one.

Annotations are more like evaluative summaries, requiring a specific style of writing. Here you’ll need to summarize the source and explain why it’s relevant and critical for your paper’s topic.

An annotation starts with a summary: You’ll have 2-3 sentences to represent the original work, so it matters to focus on the essential information it says.

Here’s our ultimate guide to help you: How to Write an Annotated Bibliography: Formats, Types, Steps

3 – Academic Notes

This type is about summarizing the original work (a lecture, a discussion, a lesson) in the form of personal notes.

You write academic notes for yourself, writing down the critical information a teacher says during a lecture. While it seems easy, it’s still about finding the balance between what to note and what to ignore.

• Focus on what your professor writes on a board.
• Refer to a textbook: What does it summarize about the topic?
• Decide how often you’ll make notes: Will it be one point per minute or maybe one point per five minutes?

4 – Summaries Within Essays

It’s the most common type of academic summary: a quick one within the body of another assignment. For example, when you write argumentative or critical essays, you’ll need to introduce some sources to explain your arguments.

Such summaries are super short: 2-3 sentences for the reader to get an idea of the work before you move on to the specific parts that support your point.

How to Format a Summary: Tips

Summaries don’t have any specific format. As a rule, it’s a paragraph including the introductory sentence, the original text’s main ideas, and the final sentence wrapping up (rephrasing) the main point.

Below are some writing tips on how to format a summary:

• Make it a paragraph.
• Start with a sentence specifying the original text’s title, author, and main point.
• Use your own words, don’t cite the original.
• Avoid sharing your thoughts or interpretations about the work you summarize. Use an objective tone.
• Specify critical sub-points the author used to support the main point. If you decide to quote them, mention the paragraph number after each point, thus specifying where it was in the original. (See the example.)
• Wrap up your summary in the last sentence: restate the main point.

How to format a summary: Example

Frequently Asked Questions:

How long is a summary.

The length can range from a few sentences to several paragraphs, depending on the assignment type, the purpose of the summary, and the length of the original work itself. As a rule, summaries are 1/4 length of the original text.

How many sentences are in the summary?

If your summary is a paragraph, it will be around 5-8 sentences : an introductory one, a few ones specifying the author’s points, and a final one wrapping up everything.

What should a summary include?

A summary includes an introductory sentence with the original work’s title, author name, and overview; then comes 3-5 sentences specifying the work’s main ideas; finally, the last sentence comes: it concludes the whole summary, rephrasing the main idea of the original text.

What assignments involve writing a summary?

A summary can be a stand-alone assignment (a summary paper) when you write a descriptive essay on the material you’ve read. Also, summaries are present in annotated bibliographies, some academic papers to support arguments, presentations, and personal notes a student takes during a lecture or a class discussion.

How to format a summary?

Write a summary as a paragraph, using your own words and specifying the main ideas of the original text. The first sentence will include the text’s title, author, and overview. The following 3-5 sentences specify the core ideas, and the last sentence wraps up everything. Do your best to avoid personal thoughts, interpretations, or comments in a summary.

How to write a summary for an essay?

Read the original text and figure out the main idea (point). Start a summary with a sentence about the work’s title, author name, and main idea. For example, “In his essay, Inside Out, John Smith covers the problem of multiple personality disorder .” After that, write about the core points the author represents; conclude by rephrasing the main idea of the essay you summarize.

How to write a summary of an article?

Make your summary about 1/3 length of the article. State the main ideas, identify the critical supporting details, and express the article’s meaning. Avoid copying phrases unless you use a direct quotation; if so, mention the paragraph number from where the quote comes.

How to write a summary of a book?

First, ensure you make notes while reading: It will help you remember the characters and core points and then identify which ones to include in a summary. Focus on introducing the characters and establishing the setting in your summary’s introduction; write about the “problem” of the book in the body; end your summary with resolving the book’s problem.

Who can help me write a summary?

You can address social media groups or forums on writing to ask members to assist you and explain how to write a summary. Or, feel free to ask Bid4Papers professional writers : we are here 24/7 to improve your writing skills and help you get better grades.

Related posts

• Harvard Referencing Style: A Comprehensive Guide
• Tone in Writing: Types and Examples
• How to Write a Problem Statement for a Research Paper

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When writing a summary, the goal is to compose a concise and objective overview of the original article. The summary should focus only on the article's main ideas and important details that support those ideas.

Guidelines for summarizing an article:

• State the main ideas.
• Identify the most important details that support the main ideas.
• Summarize in your own words.
• Do not copy phrases or sentences unless they are being used as direct quotations.
• Express the underlying meaning of the article, but do not critique or analyze.
• The summary should be about one third the length of the original article. 

Your summary should include:

• Give an overview of the article, including the title and the name of the author.
• Provide a thesis statement that states the main idea of the article.
• Use the body paragraphs to explain the supporting ideas of your thesis statement.
• One-paragraph summary - one sentence per supporting detail, providing 1-2 examples for each.
• Multi-paragraph summary - one paragraph per supporting detail, providing 2-3 examples for each.
• Start each paragraph with a topic sentence.
• Use transitional words and phrases to connect ideas.
• Summarize your thesis statement and the underlying meaning of the article.

 Adapted from "Guidelines for Using In-Text Citations in a Summary (or Research Paper)" by Christine Bauer-Ramazani, 2020

Additional Resources

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How to Write a Summary - Guide & Examples  (from Scribbr.com)

Writing a Summary  (from The University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center)

• Next: Writing an article REVIEW >>
• Last Updated: Mar 15, 2024 9:32 AM
• URL: https://libguides.randolph.edu/summaries

Home / Guides / Writing Guides / Parts of a Paper / How to Write a Summary

How to Write a Summary

Introduction.

In this lesson, you will learn how to summarize a text accurately.

Guide Overview

Summarizing.

• Tips for summarizing: introducing the main idea
• Tips for summarizing: transitions
• The final summary

A summary is a much shorter version of a text, with only the most essential information.

Below, you can read the main points from each section of the Scholastic News article  ​Running Into History :

• ​Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb was the first woman to run in the Boston Marathon.
• Gibb had to disguise herself as a man to participate in the race because people didn’t think women could run that far at the time.
• Gibb helped open the race to other women.

To turn this information into a summary, you will need to add a few things!​

Tips for Summarizing: Introducing the Main Idea

When you write your summary, it’s important to follow a few steps.

First, start your summary by identifying the title, author and type of text.

You should include the information above and a brief explanation of the author’s major point in the first sentence of your summary.

Example :  The Scholastic News article, “Running Into History,” explains how Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb changed the Boston Marathon.

Tips for Summarizing: Transitions

Have you ever read a text that was robotic and choppy? When that happens, the information is hard to follow and not very interesting! To avoid this, use transitions between the main points of your summary.

Look at the list of  ​Transitional Words and Phrases  from the University of Wisconsin. These can help your writing flow! Every few sentences, use summarizing language that reminds the reader that they are reading a summary. Summarizing transitions include “ The author claims… ” or “ The article explains… ”

The Final Summary

After adding in an introductory sentence and transitions to the main points of the text, the next step is to complete the summary .

Read the summary of the Scholastic News  ​art​icle  below. Notice how 8 paragraphs of text have been shortened into a one-paragraph summary!

The Scholastic News article, “Running Into History,” explains how Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb changed the Boston Marathon.Gibb was the first woman to run in the Boston Marathon. She had to disguise herself as a man to participate in the race because people didn’t think women could run that far at the time.  According to the article, Gibb’s success in the marathon helped to open the race up to other women.

In this lesson, you learned how to:

• summarize informational texts using main ideas and transitional words and phrases

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Literature Review

12 Best Tools For Perfect Research Summary Writing

Discover the 12 best tools to streamline your research summary writing, ensuring clarity and precision every time.

Aug 29, 2024

Consider you finally find the time to tackle that research paper for your class. You pull up your literature search and see dozens of articles and studies staring back at you. As you scroll through the titles and abstracts, you realize you need to figure out how to summarize the research to get started on your paper. 

Writing a practical research summary can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to. In this guide, we’ll break down what a research summary is, why it’s essential, and how to write one. This information lets you confidently write your research summary and finish your paper. 

Otio’s AI research and writing partner can help you write efficient research summaries and papers. Our tool can summarize academic articles so you can understand the material and finish your writing.

Table Of Contents

What is a research summary, purpose of a research summary, how do you write a research summary in 10 simple steps, what is a phd research summary, examples of research summary, supercharge your researching ability with otio — try otio for free today.

A research summary is a piece of writing that summarizes your research on a specific topic. Its primary goal is to offer the reader a detailed study overview with critical findings. A research summary generally contains the structure of the article. 

You must know the goal of your analysis before you launch a project. A research overview summarizes the detailed response and highlights particular issues. Writing it may be troublesome. You want to start with a structure in mind to write a good overview. 

Related Reading

• Systematic Review Vs Meta Analysis • Impact Evaluation • How To Critique A Research Article • How To Synthesize Sources • Annotation Techniques • Skimming And Scanning • Types Of Literature Reviews • Literature Review Table • Literature Review Matrix • How To Increase Reading Speed And Comprehension • How To Read Research Papers • How To Summarize A Research Paper • Literature Gap

A research summary provides a brief overview of a study to readers. When searching for literature, a reader can quickly grasp the central ideas of a paper by reading its summary. It is also a great way to elaborate on the significance of the findings, reminding the reader of the strengths of your main arguments. 

Having a good summary is almost as important as writing a research paper. The benefit of summarizing is showing the "big picture," which allows the reader to contextualize your words. In addition to the advantages of summarizing for the reader, as a writer, you gain a better sense of where you are going with your writing, which parts need elaboration, and whether you have comprehended the information you have collected. 

1. Read The Entire Research Paper

Before writing a research summary , you must read and understand the entire research paper. This may seem like a time-consuming task, but it is essential to write a good summary. Make sure you know the paper's main points before you begin writing.

2. Take Notes As You Read

As you read, take notes on the main points of the paper. These notes will come in handy when you are writing your summary. Be sure to note any necessary information, such as the main conclusions of the author's writing. This helpful tip will also help you write a practical blog summary in less time.

3. Organize Your Thoughts

Once you have finished reading and taking notes on the paper, it is time to start writing your summary. Before you begin, take a few minutes to organize your thoughts. Write down the main points that you want to include in your summary. Then, arrange these points in a logical order.

4. Write The Summary

Now that you have organized your thoughts, it is time to start writing the summary. Begin by stating the author’s thesis statement or main conclusion. Then, briefly describe each of the main points from the paper. Be sure to write clearly and concisely. When you finish, reread your summary to ensure it accurately reflects the paper's content.

5. Write The Introduction

After you have written the summary, it is time to write the introduction. The introduction should include an overview of the paper and a summary description. It should also state the main idea.

6. Introduce The Report's Purpose

The summary of a research paper should include a brief description of the paper's purpose. It should state the paper's thesis statement and briefly describe each of the main points of the paper.

7. Use Keywords To Introduce The Report

When introducing the summary of a research paper, use keywords familiar to the reader. This will help them understand the summary and why it is essential.

8. State The Author's Conclusions

The summary of a research paper should include a brief statement of the author's conclusions. This will help your teacher understand what the paper is trying to achieve.

9. Keep It Concise

A summary should be concise and to the point. It should not include any new information or arguments. It should be one paragraph long at maximum.

10. Edit And Proofread

After you have written the summary, edit and proofread it to ensure it is accurate and precise. This will help ensure that your summary is effective and free of any grammar or spelling errors.

1. Otio: Your AI Research Assistant  

Knowledge workers, researchers, and students today need help with content overload and are left to deal with it using fragmented, complex, and manual tooling. Too many settle for stitching together complicated bookmarking, read-it-later, and note-taking apps to get through their workflows. Now that anyone can create content with a button, this problem will only worsen. Otio solves this problem by providing researchers with one AI-native workspace. It helps them: 

1. Collect a wide range of data sources, from bookmarks, tweets, and extensive books to YouTube videos. 

2. extract key takeaways with detailed ai-generated notes and source-grounded q&a chat. , 3. create draft outputs using the sources you’ve collected. .

Otio helps you to go from a reading list to the first draft faster. Along with this, Otio also enables you to write research papers/essays faster. Here are our top features that researchers love: AI-generated notes on all bookmarks (Youtube videos, PDFs, articles, etc.), Otio enables you to chat with individual links or entire knowledge bases, just like you chat with ChatGPT, as well as AI-assisted writing. 

Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner — try Otio for free today ! 

2. Hypotenuse AI: The Versatile Summarizer  

Like all the AI text summarizers on this list, Hypotenuse AI can take the input text and generate a short summary. One area where it stands out is its ability to handle various input options: You can simply copy-paste the text, directly upload a PDF, or even drop a YouTube link to create summaries. 

You can summarize nearly 200,000 characters (or 50,000 words) at once. 

Hypotenuse AI summarizes articles, PDFs, paragraphs, documents, and videos. 

With the AI tool, you can create engaging hooks and repurpose content for social media. 

You'll need a paid plan after the 7-day free trial. 

There needs to be a free plan available. 

The AI tool majorly focuses on generating eCommerce and marketing content. 

3. Scalenut: The Beginner-Friendly AI Summarizer  

Scalenut is one of the powerful AI text summarizers for beginners or anyone starting out. While it's not as polished as some other business-focused apps, it's significantly easier to use — and the output is just as good as others. If you want a basic online text summarizer that lets you summarize the notes within 800 characters (not words), Scalenut is your app. 

With Scalenut, you get a dedicated summary generation tool for more granular control. 

The keyword planner available helps build content directly from the short and sweet summaries. 

The AI tool integrates well with a whole suite of SEO tools, making it a more SEO-focused summarizer. 

You only get to generate one summary per day. 

Scalenut's paid plans are expensive compared to other AI tools. 

You must summarize long-form articles or blogs at most the limit of 800 characters. 

4. SciSummary: The Academic AI Summarizer  

SciSummary is an AI summarizer that helps summarize single or multiple research papers. It combines and compares the content summaries from research papers, article links, etc. 

It can save time and effort for scientists, students, and enthusiasts who want to keep up with the latest scientific developments. 

It can provide accurate and digestible summaries powered by advanced AI models that learn from feedback and expert guidance. 

It can help users read between the lines and understand complex scientific texts' main points and implications. 

It may only capture some nuances and details of the original articles or papers, which may be necessary for some purposes or audiences. 

Some types of scientific texts, such as highly technical, specialized, or interdisciplinary, may require more domain knowledge or context. 

Some sources of scientific information, such as websites, videos, or podcasts not in text format, may need help summarizing. 

5. Quillbot: The AI Summarizer for Academic Papers  

QuillBot uses advanced neural network models to summarize research papers accurately and effectively. The tool leverages cutting-edge technology to condense lengthy papers into concise and informative summaries, making it easier for users to navigate vast amounts of literature. 

You can upload the text for summarization directly from a document. 

It's excellent for summarizing essays, papers, and lengthy documents. 

You can summarize long texts up to 1200 words for free. 

The free plan is limited to professionals. 

There could have been some more output types. 

QuillBot's Premium plan only gives you 6000 words for summaries per month. 

6. Scribbr: The Research Paper Assistant  

Scribbr is an AI-driven academic writing assistant with a summarization feature tailored for research papers. The tool assists users in the research paper writing process by summarizing and condensing information from various sources, offering support in structuring and organizing content effectively. 

7. TLDR This: The Online Article Summarizer  

TLDR This uses advanced AI to effectively filter out unimportant arguments from online articles and provide readers only with vital takeaways. Its streamlined interface eliminates ads and distractions while summarizing key points, metadata, images, and other crucial article details. 

TLDR This condenses even very lengthy materials into compact summaries users can quickly consume, making it easier to process a vast range of internet content efficiently. 

Ten free "AI" summaries 

Summarization of long text 

Basic summary extraction 

Premium option cost 

No significant improvement in premium options 

8. AI Summarizer: The Text Document Summarizer  

AI Summarizer harnesses artificial intelligence to summarize research papers and other text documents automatically. The tool streamlines the summarization process, making it efficient and accurate, enabling users to extract essential information from extensive research papers efficiently. 

Easy-to-understand interface 

1500-word limit 

Multiple language support 

Contains advertisements 

Requires security captcha completion 

Struggles with lengthy content summarization 

9. Jasper: The Advanced Summarizer  

Jasper AI is a robust summarizing tool that helps users generate AI-powered paper summaries quickly and effectively. The tool supports the prompt creation of premium-quality summaries, assisting researchers in distilling complex information into concise and informative outputs. 

Jasper offers some advanced features, like generating a text from scratch and even summarizing it. 

It integrates well with third-party apps like Surfer, Grammarly, and its own AI art generator. 

It's versatile and can be used to create summaries of blogs, articles, website copy, emails, and even social media posts. 

There's no free plan available — though you get a 7-day free trial. 

You'll need to have a flexible budget to use Jasper AI. 

The Jasper app has a steep learning curve. 

10. Resoomer: The Summary Extractor  

Resoomer rapidly analyzes textual documents to determine the essential sentences and summarizes these key points using its proprietary semantic analysis algorithm. 

By automatically identifying what information matters most, Resoomer can condense elaborate texts across diverse subjects into brief overviews of their core message. With swift copy-and-paste functionality requiring no signup, this specialized tool simplifies the reading experience by extracting only vital details from complex writings. 

Clear and accurate summaries 

Creative sentence combining 

Variety of modes and options 

Lengthy text summarization without word limit in premium mode 

Confusing interface with irrelevant features 

Long-winded summaries spread across multiple pages 

11. Anyword: The Marketing-Focused Summarizer  

When I saw Anyword's summary, I could easily state that the content was unique and worth sharing, making this AI tool an excellent choice for marketers. Plus, it's very easy to use.  

Once you've copied-pasted the text and chosen a summary type, paragraph, keywords, or TL;DR, it generates a summary in minutes. Approve it; you can share the text directly without worrying about plagiarized content. 

You can test the AI tool with the 7-day free trial. 

The Anyword's text generator and summarizer are perfect for creating long-form pieces like blog posts with snippets. 

You can give detailed prompts to the AI tool to customize the generated text. 

Any word is expensive for a more limited set of features than other AI summarizers. 

It can sometimes be slower to use. 

There is no free Anyword plan available. 

12. Frase: The SEO Summarizer  

Frase is a powerful AI-powered summarizer that focuses on SEO. This means it can generate summaries that attract audiences and rank higher. Its proprietary model stands out, providing more flexibility, competitive pricing, and custom features. 

Frase uses BLUF and Reverse Pyramid techniques to generate summaries, improving ranking chances. 

It's free to use Frase's summary generator. 

Instead of GPT-3.5 or GPT-4, Frase uses its proprietary model. 

There's no way to add links to the blog or article to generate a summary. 

You can input up to 600-700 words for summarization. 

It might not be an ideal article summarizer for those who don't care about SEO. 

A research summary for a PhD is called a research statement . The research statement (or statement of research interests) is included in academic job applications. It summarizes your research accomplishments, current work, and future direction and potential. The statement can discuss specific issues such as funding history and potential requirements for laboratory equipment and space and other resources, possible research and industrial collaborations, and how your research contributes to your field's future research direction. 

The research statement should be technical but intelligible to all department members, including those outside your subdiscipline. So keep the “big picture” in mind. The strongest research statements present a readable, compelling, and realistic research agenda that fits well with the department's needs, facilities, and goals. Research statements can be weakened by: overly ambitious proposals lack of apparent direction lack of big-picture focus, and inadequate attention to the needs and facilities of the department or position. 

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Research Summary Example 1: A Look at the Probability of an Unexpected Volcanic Eruption in Yellowstone 

Introduction  .

If the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted massively , the consequences would be catastrophic for the United States. The importance of analyzing the likelihood of such an eruption cannot be overstated.  

Hypothesis  

An eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would be preceded by intense precursory activity manifesting a few weeks up to a few years in advance.  

Results     

Statistical data from multiple volcanic eruptions happening worldwide show activity that preceded these events (in particular, how early each type of activity was detected).   

Discussion and Conclusion  

Given that scientists continuously monitor Yellowstone and that signs of an eruption are normally detected much in advance, at least a few days in advance, the hypothesis is confirmed. This could be applied to creating emergency plans detailing an organized evacuation campaign and other response measures.     

Research Summary Example 2: The Frequency of Extreme Weather Events in the US from 2000-2008 as Compared to the ‘50s

Weather events bring immense material damage and cause human victims.    

Extreme weather events are significantly more frequent nowadays than in the ‘50s.   

Several categories of extreme events occur regularly now and then: droughts and associated fires, massive rainfall/snowfall and associated floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, Arctic cold waves, etc.   

Discussion and Conclusion 

Several extreme events have become significantly more frequent recently, confirming this hypothesis. This increasing frequency correlates reliably with rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere and growing temperatures worldwide. 

In the absence of another recent significant global change that could explain a higher frequency of disasters, and knowing how growing temperature disturbs weather patterns, it is natural to assume that global warming (CO2) causes this increase in frequency. This, in turn, suggests that this increased frequency of disasters is not a short-term phenomenon but is here to stay until we address CO2 levels.  

Researchers, students, and knowledge workers have long struggled with the initial stages of research projects. The early steps of gathering and organizing information , taking notes, and synthesizing the material into a coherent summary are vital for establishing a solid foundation for any research endeavor. 

These steps can be tedious, overwhelming, and time-consuming. Otio streamlines this process so you can go from the reading list to the first draft faster. Along with this, Otio also helps you write research papers/essays faster. Here are our top features that researchers love: 

AI-generated notes on all bookmarks (Youtube videos, PDFs, articles, etc.), Otio enables you to chat with individual links or entire knowledge bases, just like you chat with ChatGPT, as well as AI-assisted writing. 

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• Essay Editor

How to End a College Essay: Strategies and Examples

Writing a college essay takes skill, but making a strong college essay conclusion is often the most important part. A great ending can make a big impact on your readers and bring your main ideas together. This guide will walk you through four strategies that will help you create impactful conclusions that resonate with your audience.

1. Writing a Memorable College Essay Conclusion

The conclusion of your essay is your last chance to strengthen your main points and leave a lasting impression. A well-written ending can make your whole essay better and more memorable.

Successful Essay Ending Examples

Here are some great ways to end an essay:

• Share a thoughtful idea that connects to your main point, giving a sense of closure and understanding.
• Quickly go over your main points, showing them in a new way.
• Discuss why your topic matters beyond just your essay.
• Link back to your introduction, making your writing feel complete.

Example: 

"When I started looking into how music affects the brain, I didn't know I'd find a connection to my grandmother's struggle with Alzheimer's. I learned that songs people know well can often bring back memories for patients, even when they have trouble talking. This discovery changed how I see music's power and gave me a new way to connect with my grandmother. When we hum her favorite songs together, I see hints of recognition in her eyes, reminding me that sometimes, big scientific ideas can have very personal effects."

Common Mistakes in Ending an Essay

Avoid these problems when writing your college essay conclusion:

• Adding new ideas: Your conclusion should bring together existing points, not introduce new information.
• Just repeating your main point: While it's important to remind readers of your main idea, simply saying it again word-for-word doesn't work well.
• Using overused phrases: Don't use expressions like "In conclusion" or "To sum up."
• Stopping too suddenly: Make sure your conclusion gives a feeling of completion and doesn't leave readers hanging.

Aithor's advanced language model can help you write compelling conclusions that avoid these common mistakes and enhance the overall impact of your essay.

2. Thought-Provoking Questions: A Powerful Way to End an Essay

Ending an essay with a question that makes people think can get your readers interested and encourage them to keep thinking about your topic. This approach leaves a strong impression and can make your essay more memorable.

"After looking at how social media changes how we see ourselves, we're left with an important question: Can we find a way to share our lives online while still living them fully offline? Maybe the answer isn't choosing between the online and real worlds, but learning how to connect well in both."

When using this method, make sure your question is:

• Related to your essay's main topic
• Open-ended, encouraging deeper thought
• Not easy to answer with just "yes" or "no"

3. How to End Your College Essay with a Call to Action

A call to action (CTA) in your conclusion can encourage your readers to do something based on the ideas you've talked about. This works well for essays about social issues, environmental problems, or personal growth topics.

"In this essay, we've looked at the problem of plastic in our oceans. Now, it's time to help fix it. Start by replacing one single-use plastic item you use every day with something you can use again. It could be as simple as using a reusable water bottle or bringing your own bags to the store. Tell your friends and family what you're doing. By taking these small steps, we're not just making less waste; we're starting a chain reaction that can lead to cleaner oceans and a healthier planet."

When writing a CTA for your college essay conclusion, make sure it's:

• Clear and easy to write
• Directly related to your essay's main points
• Something your readers can actually do

Aithor can assist you in writing perfect calls to action that connect with your readers and fit well with your essay's content.

4. Personal Anecdotes: An Engaging Essay Ending

Ending an essay with a personal story can help your readers feel connected to you and strengthen your main message. This approach makes your writing more relatable and human.

"Last summer, I helped at a local animal shelter. One day, they brought in an older, scruffy dog named Max. For weeks, people passed him by, always choosing younger, cuter puppies instead. I started spending extra time with Max, and slowly, his playful side came out. When a family finally took him home, the happiness on their faces – and Max's wagging tail – showed me how important it is to give every living thing a chance. This taught me more about patience, unfair judgments, and the power of second chances than any book ever could."

When using a personal story to end your college essay:

• Make sure it relates to your main topic
• Keep it short and powerful
• Use clear language to paint a picture for your readers

Tips on How to End a College Essay

To write a strong conclusion, think about these extra tips on how to end a college essay:

• Wrap up your main points clearly while suggesting how they might apply to other things or future ideas to keep your readers thinking.
• Make sure your conclusion sounds like the rest of your essay for a smooth, polished finish.
• Don't weaken your arguments by sounding unsure in your conclusion.
• Be extra careful with grammar and punctuation in your conclusion, as it's the last thing your readers will remember.
• Write your conclusion to connect with your specific readers, whether they're college admissions staff, teachers, or other students.
• Write a short and powerful conclusion that drives your main points home without repeating too much or using too many words.

Remember, your conclusion is your last chance to make a strong impression. Take your time to write it carefully, making sure it ties together your main points and shows why your essay matters.

For those wondering how to end a reflection paper, Aithor can help you improve your college essay conclusion, making sure it's polished, powerful, and fits your specific needs. This top writing tool can help you refine your essay ending examples and give you guidance on how to end a reflection paper or any other type of school writing.

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• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

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The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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AI resume builder

How to write the “About Me” section in a Resume? (11+ examples)

Published on September 2nd, 2024

While building your resume, the "About Me" section in a resume is that golden opportunity to showcase who you uniquely and professionally are. It is in this section that you get to tell them who you are beyond titles and skills. But how do you know this section hits the mark? Let's dive into some tips and examples to help you write an "About Me" section worth reading.

Why is the “About Me” Section Important?

Your "About Me" section is the elevator pitch of your resume. This is the summary of your professional journey, your skills, and the value you can bring to the table. If it's done correctly, it will grasp the recruiter's attention and set the tone for the remainder of your resume.

Tips for Writing an Engaging “About Me” Section

• Keep it short: Your "About Me" section is supposed to summarize, not be a biography. Try to keep it within 3-4 sentences that highlight your career and what sets you apart.
• Be real: This is your opportunity to shine as you. Stay away from jargon and clichés and get to the root of what makes you different from every other candidate out there.
• Personalize it for the Job:  Tailor-make your "About Me" section for each application. Highlight those skills and experiences that best fit the job you are applying for.
• Achievements: Just listing your responsibilities isn't saying enough; show how well you can do it. Mention significant achievements or milestones that prove the impact.
• Industry Keywords:  Sprinkle relevant industry keywords naturally in your "About Me" section. It will not only help with the ATS but also do wonders for the human reader.
• Enthusiasm: Convey that you are very excited to be hired because you love the work involved in the field.

What to Put in the “About Me” Section of a Resume?

Knowing what to put in the “About Me” section of a resume can be challenging, but it's important to strike the right balance between professionalism and personality. Here are some key elements you should consider including:

Professional Summary: In the resume summary, write a small introduction about yourself regarding your designation, experience, and key skills. This gives the reader a snapshot of your professional background quickly.

Core Skills:  List some of the most important skills that you master for the job you are applying for. These would range from technical expertise to soft skills such as leadership or effective communication.

Career Achievements:  Highlight some of the greatest accomplishments or milestones of your career. This will go a long way to show the impacts you have brought to previous roles and can further enhance your profile.

Personal Traits:  While it’s important to focus on professional attributes, including a few personal traits can help humanize your resume. For example, you might mention your enthusiasm for problem-solving, creativity, or passion for continuous learning.

Career Goals:  If space permits, briefly mention your career goals or what you’re looking for in your next role. This can show potential employers that you’re thoughtful about your career trajectory and how their role fits into your plans.

11+ Resume About Me Examples

For a Marketing Professional:  

Passionate marketing strategist with over 5 years of experience in developing data-driven campaigns that drive brand awareness and sales growth. Skilled in social media management, content creation, and analytics.

For a Software Engineer:  

Innovative software engineer with 7+ years of experience in full-stack development. Adept at solving complex problems and building scalable applications that improve user experience.

For a Graphic Designer:  

Creative graphic designer with a knack for visual storytelling. Expert in Adobe Creative Suite with a proven track record of delivering compelling designs that captivate audiences.

For a Human Resources Specialist:  

Experienced HR professional with a passion for fostering a positive work environment. Specializes in talent acquisition, employee relations, and implementing effective HR policies.

For a Sales Manager:  

Results-driven sales manager with a decade of experience in leading high-performing teams. Adept at crafting strategies that boost sales and enhance customer satisfaction.

For an Accountant:  

Detail-oriented accountant with a strong background in financial reporting and analysis. Committed to delivering accurate and timely financial information to support business decisions.

For a Content Writer:  

Versatile content writer with a flair for crafting engaging copy across various platforms. Specializes in SEO content that drives traffic and enhances brand visibility.

For a Project Manager:  

Seasoned project manager with a proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and deliver projects on time and within budget. Skilled in Agile methodologies and risk management.

For a Data Analyst:  

A data-driven analyst with a passion for uncovering insights from complex datasets. Proficient in SQL, Python, and data visualization tools to support strategic decision-making.

For a Customer Service Representative:  

Dedicated customer service professional with a strong focus on customer satisfaction. Experienced in resolving issues efficiently and building long-term customer relationships.

For a Teacher:  

A passionate educator with over 8 years of experience in creating engaging learning environments. Committed to fostering student growth through innovative teaching methods.

How HireQuotient AI Resume Builder Help In Creating an About Me Section?

The HireQuotient AI Resume Builder simplifies creating the "About Me" section by generating personalized, keyword-optimized summaries. It analyzes your skills, experience, and achievements to craft a compelling and concise profile, ensuring you make a strong first impression on potential employers. The tool tailors the content to match the job description, enhancing your chances of standing out in the hiring process.

Ready to create a standout 'About Me' section effortlessly? Give AI Resume Builder a try – visit now and craft your perfect resume in minutes!

Instead, the "About Me" section is not just a resume filler, but it's your ticket to making a lasting impression. Whether you're a seasoned pro or fresh off the career boat, a well-crafted "About Me" section can make all the difference. Keep in mind to keep it short, real, and relevant for the job one applying for. With these few tips and examples, you're off to a great start in writing that "About Me" section, representing yourself with the real deal of what you bring to the table.

By following these guidelines, you’ll ensure your “About Me” section is not only engaging but also optimized with the keyword "About me" naturally integrated throughout the content. Good luck!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you introduce yourself in a resume?

The first words of your professional introduction should include your name, job title, and employer.

What is a good line about me for a resume?

A strong line should summarize your professional identity and key skills. Example:  “Results-driven project manager with 7+ years of experience leading successful teams and projects.”

How do I write about me?

Summarize your career highlights, skills, and unique qualities in a concise, engaging way relevant to the job.

How do I tell about myself?

Briefly cover your professional background, key skills, and personality traits that align with the role you’re applying for.

How to write a personal profile?

Write a short, focused summary of your career goals, skills, and accomplishments that align with the job and capture attention.

Soujanya Varada

As a technical content writer and social media strategist, Soujanya develops and manages strategies at HireQuotient. With strong technical background and years of experience in content management, she looks for opportunities to flourish in the digital space. Soujanya is also a dance fanatic and believes in spreading light!

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