By Dana P Skopal, PhD

Whether you are at university or in the workplace you may need to summarise a 20-40 page document. After reading many pages of often dense information, how do you select and organise the relevant information for the task at hand?

Initially, we may make a lot of notes on the background information as we become familiar with the topic / author’s argument. Our minds need to process that information so we can then focus on the author’s  key arguments / recommendations. However, if you need to produce a one-page summary, you do not have the space to include all that background information. Perhaps select two to three facts or statistics that can give your reader a reasonable picture of the scenario.

If your task is a summary of the author’s position, next focus on their recommendations or conclusion. Think about:

• how has the author responded to the issue / problem that they are addressing
• what solution are they recommending.

It is important to also explain the author’s reasoning for these points, which means listing their key evidence or major justification.

If your task is a summary that needs to recommend or discount the author’s position, your final section needs to clearly state your view and your reasons. A reader of your one-page text needs to be able to understand why you are taking this position. You may need to include additional evidence for this.

Remember that you need to understand the author’s position before you can summarise the information. It is like giving a summary to your friend of a movie that you saw; we easily summarise a two hour movie in about two minutes when speaking. If talking helps you, imagine that you only have two minutes to get your message across on the document you are summarising and record yourself on your mobile phone. Talking out aloud can help.

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