how to write summary of the article

How to write a summary of an article

Learn how to summarize your articles effectively using these straightforward techniques and industry-best practices.

When producing an article, a large amount of facts and information are incorporated into it, and frequently, this amount of material needs to be compressed to increase the article’s understandability.

In essence, a summary aids in determining whether an article meets the expectations regarding the issue, whether it was built with all the intricacies on the subject, whether it can lead to a conclusion, and so forth.

Although creating a summary of an article may seem simple and straightforward, it can be challenging to choose exactly what material is important enough to include. Additionally, there is much more to consider than simply restating the information. 

But have no fear—in this post, you will discover detailed instructions on how to write a summary of an article correctly and effectively.

What is a summary and why is it important?

It’s vital to note that summaries are a powerful indicator of your reading and writing skills. A summary is simply a brief outline of an article’s main elements that are written entirely in your own words.

Generally speaking, a summary should be around one-third as long as the original and still must contain all of the most important information.

A summary has many benefits, and as was already mentioned, it’s important to condense a lot of the information in an article. This can be helpful for the writer because it aids in identifying the main points and key details, and it can provide a variety of perspectives that increase comprehension and shed light on the subject, besides communicating the essence of the article in an engaging way.

It can also make it simpler for readers to understand an article because they won’t have to wade through long paragraphs of text to figure out what your thesis statement was about.

Summaries vs. Reviews

Let’s discuss how to distinguish reviews from summaries before moving on to how to write a summary of an article .

A review typically refers to the expression of a viewpoint on the issue being discussed. It concentrates around the concepts of the narrative and how it was presented rather than the specific details. 

A review also acknowledges the impact the topic has on someone or something. It can also be used to provide a thorough introduction to the topic, although, unlike summaries, reviews are not required to emphasize all of the major aspects of the topic in the same chronological order. 

Reviews can be used for any topic that can be presented to an audience and are used in both formal and informal situations, such as “a movie review” or “a review of a research paper.” 

A review’s quality might differ from one reviewer to the next based on how it is interpreted, as a good or a bad review. In contrast, summaries do not take into account any kind of opinion.

A summary is a succinct account of any representation or narrative that has been delivered and is used to aid in the reader’s comprehension of the material. It covers every critical point in the text and presents the substance in the same chronological order as the narrative. 

A summary does not stray from the main aspects of the subject at all. It makes no mention of any evaluation of the subject or the writer’s ideas. Summaries always follow the same format as the subject they are summarizing, beginning with the introduction and ending at the subject’s conclusion. Although summaries are frequently employed in academic settings, it can be applied to any other type of story.

Steps for Writing an Effective Summary

The first step in learning how to write a summary of an article is to understand that article summaries need to show that you can read and interpret information. 

1. Read the article at least twice

To grasp the arguments and the article’s topic, you should first read the article thoroughly. At this stage, don’t bother about taking notes; instead, just concentrate on reading the article. This is where having strong reading abilities come in.

2. State the main idea

You will be able to identify the article’s core theme and topic after carefully reading the article.

3. Start taking notes

After identifying the main topic, start to take note of the supporting arguments, concentrate on the key points and consider what else is in the article that might be useful or important for the summary.

Additionally, it’s a good idea to highlight specific words or phrases in the content and when summarizing the article, incorporate the main keywords.

4. Write it down

Start writing it down using your own words and avoid copying phrases and sentences from the article unless they’re direct quotations.

5. Think about the structure

A summary must have an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion that are no longer than one-third the article’s length.

• Introduction: 

Your opening paragraph should contain a hook that draws the reader in. The introduction includes a general description of the topic, the article’s title, and, ideally, a thesis statement that captures the essence of the text and that explains which points you’re going to expand on.

• Body Paragraphs:

Each supporting argument should have its own body paragraph. Talk about it, clarify, or condense those supporting points in each body paragraph. Be sure to talk about the reasoning behind each individual conclusion and the supporting evidence they employed. 

• Conclusion:

Restate your introduction’s topic sentence or thesis statement about the key argument to start your conclusion, make sure you rephrase this from your opening statement.

You can better communicate the article’s overall meaning and arguments by using this section. Describe any additional issues, consequences, or problems that the article raises in a few phrases. 

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how to write a summary

A step-by-step guide to writing a great summary.

A summary of a literary work isn't just a plain-old synopsis. It's a valuable study tool, a foundational element of all kinds of essays, a common testing mechanism, and one of the basics of literary analysis. 

Whether you're in high school or college, developing a deep understanding of how and when to summarize a book or text is a valuable skill. Doing so might require a little more knowledge and effort than you'd think. 

That's why we're covering all aspects of summaries, from study tools to plot summaries, below.

What Is a Summary?

A summary is a brief overview of a text (or movie, speech, podcast, etcetera) that succinctly and comprehensively covers the main ideas or plot points. 

Sounds simple, right? Well, there are a lot of unique characteristics that differentiate summaries from other commentary, such as analyses, book reviews, or outlines. 

Summaries are: 

• In your own words. It's important that you don't just copy and paste the writer's words (in fact, that's plagiarizing). Writing the key points of a work in your own words indicates your comprehension and absorption of the material. 
• Objective. While a summary should be in your own words, it shouldn't contain your opinions. Instead, you should gather the main points and intentions of the writer and present them impartially. (If you include your opinions, it instead becomes an analysis or review.)
• More than paraphrasing. Many students fall into the trap of simply paraphrasing—plainly restating the ideas or events of the work. (Is our definition starting to sound contradictory? We told you it wasn't straightforward!) Rather than recounting the events or ideas in a work chronologically or in the order they're presented, instead consider the broad scope of how they all contribute to the narrative or argument. 
• Short. There are no strict rules regarding length, only that it is concise. It's largely dependent on the length of the text it summarizes: longer texts, longer summaries. It also depends on the assignment or objective. However, most are about one to two paragraphs in length. 
• Comprehensive. Yes, it's another seemingly contradictory descriptor, but an important one. Summaries are comprehensive, meaning they cover all of the main plot points or ideas in a work (so they inherently contain "spoilers"). You should present those ideas in a way that condenses them into an inclusive, but not exhaustive, recounting in order to keep it short.  
• Straightforward (even if the text isn't). A good summary should be easy to comprehend, presenting the reader with a simple but all-encompassing understanding of the work at hand. With complex texts, summaries can be particularly useful because they distill big, complicated ideas into a bite-sized package. 

When to Write a Summary

Like so many elements of literary analysis, summaries are misunderstood. We've already explained why they aren't as simple as most people think, but neither are their uses. 

Summary writing is a useful skill in a variety of circumstances, both in and outside the English and Language Arts classrooms. 

Readers, writers, teachers, and students can use summaries: 

• As a study tactic. The ability to summarize a book or text indicates that you've absorbed and understand the material. Plus, writing down notes (as in a summary) is a great way to retain material. Try summarizing at the end of a book chapter, after each section of an article, or periodically in textbooks. Doing so will help you digest the material you've just read, confirming you understood and retained the information therein. Stopping frequently to summarize is most effective because you're less likely to forget important plot points or ideas. 
• As an assignment. Teachers and professors often ask students to summarize a text as a test to confirm they read and understood the material. Before heading into class—especially if you have a test or quiz scheduled—try practicing summarizing the text. Write it down (rather than practicing it out loud or in your head) so that you can review your ideas and ensure you're presenting them succinctly and sensibly. 
• As part of an essay. If you're referencing a book or article in your own paper, you might need to summarize the source as the foundation for your argument. In this case, your summary should be particularly short so the reader doesn't lose sight of your own argument and intention. Introduce the name of the work and its author, then use one sentence (two at most) to describe their objective and how it relates to your own. 
• As part of a review. Summaries are very useful in an academic setting, but they have their place outside of it too. Whether you're on a book review site or just sharing a recommendation with a friend, being able to succinctly write a book summary (with or without spoilers) will help others to make their own judgements of a book. 

Your Step-by-Step Guide for How to Write a Summary

Step 1: read the work .

Summaries are often perceived as a workaround for reading the work itself. That's not a great strategy under most circumstances because you tend to lose a lot of the details and nuance of a work, but it's particularly impractical to do so when writing about the work. 

Remember, a summary is supposed to present your perception of the work as a whole. So in order to develop that perception, you have to first read the original text. 

Step 2: Take Notes 

As you read the work, simultaneously take notes. If you own the book, it might be helpful to add your notes to the margins or highlight passages that are particularly relevant or capture a key idea. If you don't own the book, try taking notes on your computer or in a notebook. You can still notate important passages by writing down the page and paragraph number or writing an abbreviated version of the quotation. Alternatively, try marking key passages with sticky notes or tabs. 

It might also be helpful to write out a short outline of the work as you go. While you won't want to use this verbatim (remember, you shouldn't just paraphrase the work), it can help you establish and remember the text's framework. 

Step 3: Identify the Author's Thesis Statement, Objective, or Main Point 

In some works, such as a journal article, a writer will provide a thesis statement. A thesis statement is a one-sentence synopsis of the author's argument and intention. A thesis statement can be really helpful in forming the backbone of your own summary, just as it forms the backbone of the essay. 

However, even when a thesis statement isn't present—like in a novel—the writer always has an objective or main idea. You should always identify this idea and use it to form the foundation of your summary. 

The main point might be apparent at the outset of the work. Other times, the author won't present it until the conclusion. Sometimes you might identify multiple objectives throughout the work. That's why it's important, as you read, to note any ideas that might be the  main  idea. Even those that aren't the  most  important will likely remain relevant. 

Step 4: Note Other Important Elements

If something stands out to you about the work and seems to play an important role in the text's overall narrative or structure, make a note about it. This could be a recurring theme, an incident in the storyline, or a deviation from the overall argument. 

As you identify and note important elements and moments in the work, the structure of your summary should begin to fall into place. 

Step 5: Prepare to Write Your Summary 

Once you've finished reading the work, review your notes and highlight the key points that came to light. Remember, your summary should be objective, so disregard any opinions you might have noted about the work. You should introduce the thesis or objective, briefly encapsulate the important ideas and moments from the work, and end with a conclusion that ties those ideas to the objective. Keep this structure in mind as you begin. 

Step 6: Begin by Introducing the Work 

As you begin, introduce the work, its author, and, if relevant, the context.

Depending on your situation—for example, if your teacher or professor has asked you to summarize a work as part of an assignment or quiz—this might seem redundant. However, it is standard practice to begin by introducing the work, even if the reader already knows what you're writing about. 

Example:  In  The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald... 

Step 7: Present the Thesis, Main Idea, or Central Argument

Once you've introduced the work, your priority is to clearly define the author's thesis, important point, or central argument. As mentioned above, sometimes the author presents this idea clearly and succinctly at the outset of their work; at other times, it's buried deep in the text. 

Regardless of how the main idea is presented in the work, it should be front and center in your summary. Some teachers might refer to this as a "topic sentence" or "introductory sentence." This is the central point around which you will construct the rest of your writing. As you progress, you'll highlight other ideas or occurrences that relate or contribute to this main idea, so it's important that your representation of it is easily understood. 

Example:  In  The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the story of Jay Gatsby as a symbol of the social stratification, greed, and indulgence of 1920s America. 

Step 8: Briefly Discuss the Important Elements of the Work

After identifying the thesis or central argument, you should provide a brief overview of the work's other elements, ideas, and plot points. For the most part, the information you present throughout this section should bolster the thesis presented previously. Each sentence should serve as a supporting point for the topic sentence. Don't simply list ideas or plot points, but show how they're connected and inform the work as a whole. Of course, there may also be important elements of the work that are not directly tied to the main idea; it's ok to include these if you feel they are vital to understanding the work.

When writing the body, you should consciously and intentionally leave out unnecessary details. They tend to bog down your writing and lose the reader. 

Example:  The narrator, Nick Carraway, moves to New York's "West Egg," where he reunites with his cousin, Daisy, and her husband, Tom Buchanan. Fitzgerald clearly delineates social lines between West Egg (new money) and East Egg (old money), where Tom and Daisy reside. 

Nick attends a lavish party thrown by his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, and learns Jay formerly had a relationship with Daisy. The two reignite their forbidden affair. Tom reveals to Daisy that Gatsby earned his money illegally, through smuggling alcohol, and is actually a man of humble Midwestern origins. Daisy and Gatsby try to run away together, but Daisy accidentally runs over Tom's mistress. Tom, eager to exact revenge, convinces his mistress' husband that Gatsby was to blame in her death, and he murders Gatsby before committing suicide. Few of Gatsby's many friends attend his funeral.

Step 9: Write a Conclusion that Ties It All Together

Much like you introduce the author's major point at the outset of your summary, you should revisit it as you close out your writing. If you presented the author's main idea in the introduction, and then bolstered that main idea by recollecting plot points or important elements from the work, your conclusion should then reiterate how those elements relate to the main idea. 

Example:  Though Gatsby subscribed to the extravagance of his peers, his efforts to fit into the upper echelon of West and East Egg were negated by his humble origins; always out of place, he was rejected for his social class as much as his perceived crimes.  

Step 10: Edit

Before submitting your work, read it in full, and edit out any superfluous and redundant information. It's likely that unnecessary details snuck in as you were writing, and you might find that certain plot points just feel unnecessary within the scope of your finished product. 

In addition to editing for content, be sure to edit it closely for grammatical or spelling errors. Even if your summary is well thought out, its expertise is compromised if it's full of errors! 

How to Write a Plot Summary

The step-by-step guide to writing an effective summary, outlined above, applies to most summaries. However, each type has its own unique elements outside of those standard requirements. 

A plot or book summary, for example, should encapsulate the plot of a short story or novel. When writing one, there are unique strategies to follow.  

Dos of Writing a Plot Summary

• Note plot points as the book or story unfolds. Especially in longer novels, it can be difficult to keep track of the twists and turns in the storyline. That's why we recommend taking notes as you read. 
• Use online study guides for inspiration. Websites like SuperSummary provide in-depth summaries free of charge. While this is a good starting point when writing your own, it should only be for inspiration. Don't copy examples online (that's plagiarism!). 
• Be sure to cover the three main arcs of every story: the exposition, climax, and conclusion. The exposition is the moment when the conflict or driving narrative is introduced. The climax is when that conflict comes to a head, and the narrative reaches its most dramatic moments. The conclusion is when the conflict is resolved or the story comes to an end. You should also include any inciting incidents (the first domino in a plot point).
• Connect the dots. Throughout, you should demonstrate an understanding of how events and characters are related, rather than introducing each element as an independent variable. Remember, you should tie each plot point back to the main idea. 

Don'ts of Writing a Plot Summary

• Don't just regurgitate the storyline. Rather than drone through the story plot point by plot point, you should highlight key moments in the narrative and direct them back to the author's objective. 
• Avoid repetitive phrases like "then" or "next." A key indication you're just repeating the storyline point by point is utilizing a phrase like "then" or "next." While you should recount the major incidents of the narrative, it shouldn't feel so formulaic. 
• Don't let it drag on. Books are long, but summarizing a book should still be short. While it depends on the assignment and the work in question, your summary should be 200 to 600 words, max.

Example :   In  The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the story of Jay Gatsby as a symbol of the social stratification, greed, and indulgence of 1920s America.   The narrator, Nick Carraway, moves to New York's "West Egg," where he reunites with his cousin, Daisy, and her husband, Tom Buchanan. Fitzgerald clearly delineates social lines between West Egg (new money) and East Egg (old money), where Tom and Daisy reside. 

Nick attends a lavish party thrown by his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, and learns he formerly had a relationship with Daisy. When the two reignite their forbidden affair, disaster ensues. Tom reveals to Daisy that Gatsby earned his money illegally, through smuggling alcohol, and is actually a man of humble Midwestern origins. Daisy and Gatsby try to run away together, but Daisy accidentally runs over Tom's mistress. Tom, eager to exact revenge, convinces his mistress' husband that Gatsby was to blame in her death, and he murders Gatsby before committing suicide. Few of Gatsby's many friends attend his funeral.

Though Gatsby subscribed to the extravagance of his peers, his efforts to fit into the upper echelon of West and East Egg were negated by his humble origins; always out of place, he was rejected for his social class as much as his perceived crimes.

For an in-depth analysis of The Great Gatsby , check out the our study guide (we have an audio guide, too!).

How to Summarize an Article or Essay

The nature of an article or essay is quite different from a novel or short story, and in many ways, your summary should be too. The outline above remains the same, but the details are different. 

Here's what you should and shouldn't do when writing your article summary. 

Dos of Writing an Article Summary

• Skim the original article first. To develop a basic understanding of the article and the writer's objectives, skim the content before reading it closely. Doing so will help you to identify some of the key points and then pay attention to the arguments around them when you read the article in full. 
• Then read the article closely, marking key passages and ideas. Noting important ideas as you read will help you develop a deeper understanding of the writer's intentions.  
• Note headings and subheadings, which likely identify important points. In articles and essays, the author often utilizes subheadings to introduce their most important ideas. These subheadings can help guide your own writing. 
• Keep it short. The rule of brevity applies to article summaries too. In fact, because articles are usually short compared to novels or books, your text should be correlatively brief. And if you're utilizing the work as part of your own essay or argument, just a couple sentences will do.

Don'ts of Writing an Article Summary

• Don't ignore the conclusion. When reading a long article or essay, it can be tempting to overlook the conclusion and focus on the body paragraphs of the article. However, the conclusion is often where the author most clearly outlines their findings and why they matter. It can serve as a great foundation for your own writing. 
• Don't copy anything from the article directly—always paraphrase. If you copy any passages word-for-word from the article, be sure to identify them as quotations and attribute them to the author. Even this should be done sparingly. Instead, you should encapsulate their ideas within your own, abbreviated words.  
• Don't forget to include proper citations. If you do include a direct quotation from the article, be sure to properly cite them. You can learn how to properly cite quotations in our Academic Citation Resource Guide . 

Example Summary of  "Gatsby as a Drowned Sailor" :  In her essay, "Gatsby as a Drowned Sailor," Margaret Lukens posits that a major, and often overlooked, motif in  The Great Gatsby  is that of the "drowned sailor." The novel, she points out, is immersed in nautical symbols and themes, particularly in the scenes surrounding Jay Gatsby. For example, Gatsby grew up on the shores of Lake Superior, now owns a house on the Long Island Sound, and supposedly spends much of his time on his boat. 

Lukens nods to the nautical imagery throughout Gatsby's lavish party, as well as Nick's interactions with Gatsby. Many of these, she argues, foreshadow Gatsby's death in his pool. Even his funeral is a testament to the motif, with the few attendees soaked to the skin with rain. Lukens presents a thorough case for the overarching nautical motif in  The Great Gatsby  and her argument that though Gatsby hooked a big one, ultimately it was "the one that got away." 

FAQs: How to Write a Book Summary  

How do you summarize without plagiarizing .

By its very nature, a summary isn't plagiarizing because it should be written in your own words. However, there are cases where it might be difficult to identify an appropriate synonym, and the phrase remains somewhat close to the original. In this scenario, just be sure to differentiate the rest of the phrase as much as possible. And if you need to include a direct quote from the work, be sure to appropriately cite it. 

How to write a summary and a reaction? 

In some cases, your teacher may ask you to write a summary and a reaction. Whereas a summary is objective, a reaction is a matter of opinion. So in this case, you should present the actions or ideas of the work, then respond to those actions and ideas with your personal thoughts. 

Why write a summary? 

A summary is a helpful tool many educators use to test their students' comprehension of a text. However, it is also a useful study tactic because recounting what you read can help you organize and retain information. 

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How to Write a Summary (Examples Included)

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.

Take your writing to the next level:

20 Editing Tips from Professional Writers

Whether you are writing a novel, essay, article, or email, good writing is an essential part of communicating your ideas., this guide contains the 20 most important writing tips and techniques from a wide range of professional writers..

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

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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Article Summaries, Reviews & Critiques

Writing an article summary.

• Writing an article REVIEW
• Writing an article CRITIQUE
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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

How to Write a Summary of an Article: Brevity in Brilliance

Table of contents

• 1 What Is an Article Summary?
• 2 Difference Between Abstract and Research Summary Writing
• 3.1 Preparing for Summarizing
• 3.2 Identifying Main Ideas
• 3.3 Writing The Summary
• 4.1 Introduction
• 4.2 Methods
• 4.3 Results
• 4.4 Discussion
• 4.5.1 Structure Types  
• 5 Summary Writing Tips and Best Practices
• 6 Common Mistakes to Avoid
• 7 Examples of Article Summaries

Writing a review or a critique is often more difficult than it seems, so students and writers alike are often wondering about how to summarize an article. We know how challenging a task this can be, so this guide will give you a clear perspective and the main points on how to write a summary of an article.

Here’s a brief overview of the main points the article will cover before we start:

• The essence of an article summary and how to approach writing it;
• Three main steps for a successful research summary;
• Tips and strategies for outlining the main idea;
• Examples of good and bad short summaries for inspiration;
• Common mistakes to avoid when writing a research article summary.

The steps outlined in this post will help you summarize an article in your own words without sacrificing the original text message and ideas.

What Is an Article Summary?

An article summary is a concise and condensed version of a longer piece of writing, often an article, research paper, or news report. Its purpose is to capture the main ideas, crucial points, and key arguments found in the original text, providing a brief and easily understandable overview.

These summaries are composed in the author’s own words, distilling the essential information to help readers quickly grasp the content without having to read the entire article. They serve as a helpful tool to offer a snapshot of the most important aspects of the content, making it simpler for readers to decide whether they wish to delve into the complete article.

A common goal of academic summary writing is to  improve critical thinking skills , and they serve as great practice for academic writers to improve their own writing skills. There are several main goals of writing a synopsis of an article:

• This paper’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive yet brief descriptive comment on a particular article, telling your readers about the author’s topic sentence and important points in his work and the key points of it.
• It serves to outline a laconic reader’s perspective on the paper while keeping the main point.
• Identifies all the crucial segments from each of the paper’s sections.

A proper article summary can help do your college essays the right way because it provides a great, concise view of the source article. Especially if you are often facing writing tasks like academic papers, knowing how to write a good synopsis can upgrade your writing skills.

Difference Between Abstract and Research Summary Writing

Things get confusing when someone wants to define their place and purpose inside the text. To be more precise, the abstract appears first in the academic article, whereas the summary appears last.

Many students cannot distinguish between a summary and an abstract of a research paper. While these have certain similarities, they are not the same. Therefore, you must be aware of the subtleties before beginning a research article.

On the one hand, both components have a limited scope. Their goal is to provide a thorough literature assessment of the research paper’s main ideas. When you write a research summary, focus on your topic, methods, and findings.

Below you can find more differences between the abstract and research article summary for your project:

• Abstracts provide a succinct synopsis of your work and showcase your writing style.
• Abstracts lay out the background information and clarify the primary hypothesis thesis statement, while the summary emphasizes your research methodology, highlighting the important elements.

Finally, you must submit the abstract before actual publication. On the other hand, article summaries come with the finished piece of paper.

Steps to Write a Summary for an Article

In the world of effective communication, the skill of crafting short yet informative summaries is invaluable. Whether you’re a student dealing with academic articles, a professional simplifying complex reports, or simply someone looking to grasp the essence of an interesting read, mastering the art of summarization is crucial. This summarizing guidelines will lead you through the steps to write a compelling piece.

These steps will empower you to extract core ideas and key takeaways, making it easier to understand and share information efficiently.

Preparing for Summarizing

Before you start writing your summary of the article, you’ll have to read the piece a few times first as a base for further understanding. It’s recommended that you read the paper without taking any notes first because this gives you some room to create your own perspective of the work.

After the first reading, you should be able to tell the author’s perspective and the type of audience they are focusing on. Subsequently, you should get ready for the second read with a paper to write notes on as you get into the arguments of the post.

Identifying Main Ideas

As you come to the second read of the article, you should focus on the thesis statement, main ideas, and important details laid out in the piece. If you look at the headings and sections individually, you should be able to get some material for the summarizing by taking out the crucial events or a topic sentence from each part.

While writing down the main arguments of the post, make sure to ask the five “W” questions. If you think about the “Who” , “Why” , “When” , “Where” , and “What” , you should be able to construct a layout for the summary based on the main ideas.

Writing The Summary

Once you lay down the article’s main ideas and answer the key questions about it, you’ll have an outline for writing. The next move is to keep an eye out on the structure of the summary and use the material in your notes to write your short take on these essential points.

The steps for writing article summaries can be similar to the  main steps of article review writing . Therefore, it’s necessary to discuss the structure next so we can set you in the right direction with summary-specific format tips.

Outline Your Research Summary

To summarize research papers, you must be aware of the basic structure. You may know how to cite sources and filter the ideas, but you’ll also have to organize your findings in a concise academic structure.

The following components are essential for a summary paper format:

Introduction

Your research article’s introduction is a brief overview of your work. Outlining important ideas or presenting the state of the topic under research seeks to make the issue easier for your audience to comprehend.

The Methods section includes tests, databases, experiments, surveys, questionnaires, sampling, or statistical analysis, used to conduct a research study. However, for a solid research paper summary example, you should avoid getting bogged down in the specifics and just discuss the tools you utilized and how you conducted your study.

This part the summary of research, presents all of the data you gathered from your investigations and analysis. Therefore, incorporate any information you learned by watching your target and the supporting theories.

This stage requires you to summarize research paper, evaluate the result in light of the pertinent background, and determine how it reacts to the prevailing trends. You need to identify the subject’s advantages and disadvantages once you have provided an explanation using theoretical models. You may also recommend more research in the area.

Use this last part to support or refute your theories in light of the data collection and analysis, though, if your mentor insists on it being in a separate paragraph.

Here’s a research summary example outlining the topic “The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health Among Adolescents”:

I. Introduction.

• Brief overview of the rise of social media.
• Importance of studying its impact on mental health.
• Statement of the problem.
• Purpose of the study.

II. Literature Review.

• Statistics on social media penetration.
• Common platforms and their features.
• Studies supporting a negative and/or a positive impact.
• Gaps and inconsistencies in existing literature.

III. Methodology.

• Quantitative approach.
• Cross-sectional survey.
• Survey instrument details.
• Ethical considerations.

IV. Data Analysis.

• Descriptive statistics.
• Inferential statistics (e.g., regression analysis).
• Tables and figures.
• Key findings.

V. Discussion.

• Correlation between social media usage and mental health.
• Identification of patterns and trends.
• Practical implications for parents, educators, and policymakers.
• Suggestions for future research.

VI. Conclusion.

• Summary of key findings.
• Final remarks on the study’s contribution to the field.

The given research article summary example depicts how the text can be structured in a laconic and effective way.

Structure Types  

So, now you can see the best practices and structure types for writing both empirical and argumentative summaries. The only thing left to discuss is to go through our example outlined above and divide its structure into distinctive parts, which you could use when writing your own summary.

The best way to start is by mentioning the title and the author of the article. It’s best to keep it straightforward: “ In “Who Will Be In Cyberspace”, author Langdon Winner takes a philosophical approach…”

The next part is critical for writing a good summary since you’ll want to captivate the reader with a short and concise one-point thesis. If you look at our example, you’ll see that the first sentence or two contains the main point, along with the title and the author’s name.

So, that’s an easy way to get straight to the point while also sounding professional, and this works for all the essay structure types. You should briefly point out the main supportive points as well – “ He supports this through the claims that people working in the information industry should be more careful about newly developed technologies…”  

The key is to keep it neutral and not overcomplicate things with supportive claims. Try to make them as precise as possible and provide examples that directly support the main thesis.

Unless it’s a scientific article summary where you are requested to provide your take as a researcher, it’s also best to avoid using personal opinions. You can conclude the summary by once again mentioning the main thought of the article, and this time you can make the connection between the main thesis and supporting points to wrap up.

Summary Writing Tips and Best Practices

The way in which you’ll approach writing a summary depends on the type and topic of the original article, but there are some common points to keep in mind. Whether you are trying to summarize a research article or a journal piece, these tips can help you stay on topic:

• Be concise – The best way to summarize an article quickly is to be straightforward. In practice, it means making it all in a few sentences and no longer than one-fourth of the size of the original article.
• Highlight the study’s most significant findings – For your summary paper, prioritize presenting results that have the most substantial impact or contribute significantly to the field.
• Create a reverse outline – On the other hand, you can also remove the supporting writing to end up with a reverse essay outline and these are the ideas you can expand on through your summary.
• Use your own words – In most cases, a paper summary will be scanned for plagiarism, so you need to make sure you are using your words to express the main point uniquely. This doesn’t mean you have to provide your perspective on the topic. It just means your summary needs to be original.
• Make sure to follow the tone – Summarizing an article means you’ll also need to reflect on the tone of the original piece. To properly summarize an article, you should address the same tone in which the author is addressing the audience.
• Use author tags – Along with the thesis statement, you also have to express the author’s take through author tags. This means you need to state the name of the author and piece title at the beginning, and keep adding these “tags” like “he” or “she” or simply refer to the author by name when expressing their ideas.
• Avoid minor details – To ensure you stay on topic, it’s recommended that you avoid repetition, any minor details, or descriptive elements. Try to keep the focus on key points, main statements and ideas without being carried away in thought.
• Steer clear of interpretations or personal opinions – Avoid personal interpretations or opinions when you write a summary for a research paper. Remember to stick to presenting facts and findings without injecting subjective views.
• Highlight the research context – Focus on explaining to the readers why research is important. Your summary of research paper must not repeat the previous studies. Find the gap in the existing literature it could fill. When you write a summary of a research article, try to help readers understand the significance of your study within the broader academic or practical context. Use a paraphraser if you need a fresh perspective on your writing style.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Just like it’s important to  avoid plagiarism in your text , there are a few other mistakes that commonly occur. The whole point is to summarize article pieces genuinely, with a focus on the author’s argument and writing in your own words.

We’ve often seen college graduates do an article summary and misrepresent the author’s idea or take, so that’s an important piece of advice. You should avoid drifting away from the author’s main idea throughout the summary and keep it precise but not too short.

Quotes shouldn’t be used directly within the piece, and by that, we mean both quotes from the author and quotes from other summaries on the same topic since it would qualify as plagiarism. Finally, you shouldn’t state your opinion unless you are doing a summary of a novel or short story with a specific academic goal of writing from your perspective.

Examples of Article Summaries

While our guide and tips can be used for a variety of different types of written pieces, there are various types of articles. From professional essay writing to informative article synopsis, options can vary.

We will give you an example of a summary of the different article types that you may run upon, so you can see exactly what we mean by those standardized instructions and tips:

The question of how to summarize an article isn’t new to students or even writers with more experience, so we hope this guide will shed some light on the process. The most important piece of advice we can give you is to stay true to the main statement and key points of the article and express the synopsis in your original way to avoid plagiarism.

As for the structure, we are certain you’ll be able to use our examples and layouts for different types of summaries, so make sure to pay extra attention to the structure, quotes, and author tags.

What is a good way to start a summary?

To begin a summary effectively, start by briefly introducing the article’s topic and the main points the author discusses. Capture the reader’s attention with a concise yet engaging opening sentence. Provide context and mention the author’s name and the article’s title. Convey the essence of the article’s content, highlighting its significance or relevance to the reader. This initial context-setting sentence lays the foundation for a clear and engaging summary that draws the reader in.

What is the difference between summarizing and criticizing an article?

Summarizing an article entails condensing its main points objectively and neutrally, presenting the essential information to readers. In contrast, critiquing an article involves a more in-depth evaluation, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, methodology, and overall quality, often including the expression of personal opinions and judgments. Summarization offers a snapshot of the content, while critique delves deeper, offering a comprehensive assessment.

When summarizing a text, focus on these critical questions:

• “What’s the main point?” Find the core message or argument.
• “What supports the main point?” Identify key supporting details and evidence.
• “Who’s the author?” Consider their qualifications and potential bias.
• “Who’s the intended audience?” Understand the expected reader’s knowledge level.
• “Why is it important?” Explain the text’s relevance and significance within its context. Addressing these questions ensures a thorough and effective summary.

How long is a summary and how many paragraphs does a summary have?

A summary typically ranges from one to three paragraphs in length, depending on the complexity and length of the original text. The goal is to concisely present the main points or essence of the source material, usually resulting in a summary that is significantly shorter than the original.

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• Peterborough

Writing Article Summaries

• Understanding Article Summaries 

Common Problems in Article Summaries

Read carefully and closely, structure of the summary, writing the summary.

• Sample Outlines and Paragraphs

Understanding Article Summaries

An article summary is a short, focused paper about one scholarly article that is informed by a critical reading of that article. For argumentative articles, the summary identifies, explains, and analyses the thesis and supporting arguments; for empirical articles, the summary identifies, explains, and analyses the research questions, methods, findings, and implications of the study.

Although article summaries are often short and rarely account for a large portion of your grade, they are a strong indicator of your reading and writing skills. Professors ask you to write article summaries to help you to develop essential skills in critical reading, summarizing, and clear, organized writing. Furthermore, an article summary requires you to read a scholarly article quite closely, which provides a useful introduction to the conventions of writing in your discipline (e.g. Political Studies, Biology, or Anthropology).

The most common problem that students have when writing an article summary is that they misunderstand the goal of the assignment. In an article summary, your job is to write about the article, not about the actual topic of the article. For example, if you are summarizing Smith’s article about the causes of the Bubonic plague in Europe, your summary should be about Smith’s article: What does she want to find out about the plague? What evidence does she use? What is her argument? You are not writing a paper about the actual causes of Bubonic plague in Europe.

Further, as a part of critical reading, you will often consider your own position on a topic or an argument; it is tempting to include an assessment or opinion about the thesis or findings, but this is not the goal of an article summary. Rather, you must identify, explain, and analyse the main point and how it is supported.

Your key to success in writing an article summary is your understanding of the article; therefore, it is essential to read carefully and closely. The Academic Skills Centre offers helpful instruction on the steps for critical reading: pre-reading, active and analytical reading, and reflection.

Argumentative Articles

As you read an argumentative article, consider the following questions:

• What is the topic?
• What is the research question? In other words, what is the author trying to find out about that topic?
• How does the author position his/her article in relation to other studies of the topic?
• What is the thesis or position? What are the supporting arguments?
• How are supporting arguments developed? What kind of evidence is used?
• What is the significance of the author’s thesis? What does it help you to understand about the topic?

Empirical Articles

As you read an empirical article, consider the following questions:

• What is the research question?
• What are the predictions and the rationale for these predictions?
• What methods were used (participants, sampling, materials, procedure)? What were the variables and controls?
• What were the main results?
• Are the findings supported by previous research?
• What are the limitations of the study?
• What are the implications or applications of the findings?

Create a Reverse Outline

Creating a reverse outline is one way to ensure that you fully understand the article. Pre-read the article (read the abstract, introduction, and/or conclusion). Summarize the main question(s) and thesis or findings. Skim subheadings and topic sentences to understand the organization; make notes in the margins about each section. Read each paragraph within a section; make short notes about the main idea or purpose of each paragraph. This strategy will help you to see how parts of the article connect to the main idea or the whole of the article.

A summary is written in paragraph form and generally does not include subheadings. An introduction is important to clearly identify the article, the topic, the question or purpose of the article, and its thesis or findings. The body paragraphs for a summary of an argumentative article will explain how arguments and evidence support the thesis. Alternatively, the body paragraphs of an empirical article summary may explain the methods and findings, making connections to predictions. The conclusion explains the significance of the argument or implications of the findings. This structure ensures that your summary is focused and clear.

Professors will often give you a list of required topics to include in your summary and/or explain how they want you to organize your summary. Make sure you read the assignment sheet with care and adapt the sample outlines below accordingly.

One significant challenge in writing an article summary is deciding what information or examples from the article to include. Remember, article summaries are much shorter than the article itself. You do not have the space to explain every point the author makes. Instead, you will need to explain the author’s main points and find a few excellent examples that illustrate these points.

You should also keep in mind that article summaries need to be written in your own words. Scholarly writing can use complex terminology to explain complicated ideas, which makes it difficult to understand and to summarize correctly. In the face of difficult text, many students tend to use direct quotations, saving them the time and energy required to understand and reword it. However, a summary requires you to summarize, which means “to state briefly or succinctly” (Oxford English Dictionary) the main ideas presented in a text. The brevity must come from you, in your own words, which demonstrates that you understand the article.

Sample Outlines and Paragraph

Sample outline for an argumentative article summary.

• General topic of article
• Author’s research question or approach to the topic
• Author’s thesis
• Explain some key points and how they support the thesis
• Provide a key example or two that the author uses as evidence to support these points
• Review how the main points work together to support the thesis?
• How does the author explain the significance or implications of his/her article?

Sample Outline for an Empirical Article Summary

• General topic of study
• Author’s research question
• Variables and hypotheses
• Participants
• Experiment design
• Materials used
• Key results
• Did the results support the hypotheses?
• Implications or applications of the study
• Major limitations of the study

Sample Paragraph

The paragraph below is an example of an introductory paragraph from a summary of an empirical article:

Tavernier and Willoughby’s (2014) study explored the relationships between university students’ sleep and their intrapersonal, interpersonal, and educational development. While the authors cited many scholars who have explored these relationships, they pointed out that most of these studies focused on unidirectional correlations over a short period of time. In contrast, Tavernier and Willoughby tested whether there was a bidirectional or unidirectional association between participants’ sleep quality and duration and several psychosocial factors including intrapersonal adjustment, friendship quality, and academic achievement. Further they conducted a longitudinal study over a period of three years in order to determine whether there were changes in the strength or direction of these associations over time. They predicted that sleep quality would correlate with measures of intrapersonal adjustment, friendship quality, and academic achievement; they further hypothesized that this correlation would be bidirectional: sleep quality would predict psychosocial measures and at the same time, psychosocial measures would predict sleep quality.

Summary: Using it Wisely

What this handout is about.

Knowing how to summarize something you have read, seen, or heard is a valuable skill, one you have probably used in many writing assignments. It is important, though, to recognize when you must go beyond describing, explaining, and restating texts and offer a more complex analysis. This handout will help you distinguish between summary and analysis and avoid inappropriate summary in your academic writing.

Is summary a bad thing?

Not necessarily. But it’s important that your keep your assignment and your audience in mind as you write. If your assignment requires an argument with a thesis statement and supporting evidence—as many academic writing assignments do—then you should limit the amount of summary in your paper. You might use summary to provide background, set the stage, or illustrate supporting evidence, but keep it very brief: a few sentences should do the trick. Most of your paper should focus on your argument. (Our handout on argument will help you construct a good one.)

Writing a summary of what you know about your topic before you start drafting your actual paper can sometimes be helpful. If you are unfamiliar with the material you’re analyzing, you may need to summarize what you’ve read in order to understand your reading and get your thoughts in order. Once you figure out what you know about a subject, it’s easier to decide what you want to argue.

You may also want to try some other pre-writing activities that can help you develop your own analysis. Outlining, freewriting, and mapping make it easier to get your thoughts on the page. (Check out our handout on brainstorming for some suggested techniques.)

Why is it so tempting to stick with summary and skip analysis?

Many writers rely too heavily on summary because it is what they can most easily write. If you’re stalled by a difficult writing prompt, summarizing the plot of The Great Gatsby may be more appealing than staring at the computer for three hours and wondering what to say about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s use of color symbolism. After all, the plot is usually the easiest part of a work to understand. Something similar can happen even when what you are writing about has no plot: if you don’t really understand an author’s argument, it might seem easiest to just repeat what he or she said.

To write a more analytical paper, you may need to review the text or film you are writing about, with a focus on the elements that are relevant to your thesis. If possible, carefully consider your writing assignment before reading, viewing, or listening to the material about which you’ll be writing so that your encounter with the material will be more purposeful. (We offer a handout on reading towards writing .)

How do I know if I’m summarizing?

As you read through your essay, ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I stating something that would be obvious to a reader or viewer?
• Does my essay move through the plot, history, or author’s argument in chronological order, or in the exact same order the author used?
• Am I simply describing what happens, where it happens, or whom it happens to?

A “yes” to any of these questions may be a sign that you are summarizing. If you answer yes to the questions below, though, it is a sign that your paper may have more analysis (which is usually a good thing):

• Am I making an original argument about the text?
• Have I arranged my evidence around my own points, rather than just following the author’s or plot’s order?
• Am I explaining why or how an aspect of the text is significant?

Certain phrases are warning signs of summary. Keep an eye out for these:

• “[This essay] is about…”
• “[This book] is the story of…”
• “[This author] writes about…”
• “[This movie] is set in…”

Here’s an example of an introductory paragraph containing unnecessary summary. Sentences that summarize are in italics:

The Great Gatsby is the story of a mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby, who lives alone on an island in New York. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the book, but the narrator is Nick Carraway. Nick is Gatsby’s neighbor, and he chronicles the story of Gatsby and his circle of friends, beginning with his introduction to the strange man and ending with Gatsby’s tragic death. In the story, Nick describes his environment through various colors, including green, white, and grey. Whereas white and grey symbolize false purity and decay respectively, the color green offers a symbol of hope.

Here’s how you might change the paragraph to make it a more effective introduction:

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald provides readers with detailed descriptions of the area surrounding East Egg, New York. In fact, Nick Carraway’s narration describes the setting with as much detail as the characters in the book. Nick’s description of the colors in his environment presents the book’s themes, symbolizing significant aspects of the post-World War I era. Whereas white and grey symbolize the false purity and decay of the 1920s, the color green offers a symbol of hope.

This version of the paragraph mentions the book’s title, author, setting, and narrator so that the reader is reminded of the text. And that sounds a lot like summary—but the paragraph quickly moves on to the writer’s own main topic: the setting and its relationship to the main themes of the book. The paragraph then closes with the writer’s specific thesis about the symbolism of white, grey, and green.

How do I write more analytically?

Analysis requires breaking something—like a story, poem, play, theory, or argument—into parts so you can understand how those parts work together to make the whole. Ideally, you should begin to analyze a work as you read or view it instead of waiting until after you’re done—it may help you to jot down some notes as you read. Your notes can be about major themes or ideas you notice, as well as anything that intrigues, puzzles, excites, or irritates you. Remember, analytic writing goes beyond the obvious to discuss questions of how and why—so ask yourself those questions as you read.

The St. Martin’s Handbook (the bulleted material below is quoted from p. 38 of the fifth edition) encourages readers to take the following steps in order to analyze a text:

• Identify evidence that supports or illustrates the main point or theme as well as anything that seems to contradict it.
• Consider the relationship between the words and the visuals in the work. Are they well integrated, or are they sometimes at odds with one another? What functions do the visuals serve? To capture attention? To provide more detailed information or illustration? To appeal to readers’ emotions?
• Decide whether the sources used are trustworthy.
• Identify the work’s underlying assumptions about the subject, as well as any biases it reveals.

Once you have written a draft, some questions you might want to ask yourself about your writing are “What’s my point?” or “What am I arguing in this paper?” If you can’t answer these questions, then you haven’t gone beyond summarizing. You may also want to think about how much of your writing comes from your own ideas or arguments. If you’re only reporting someone else’s ideas, you probably aren’t offering an analysis.

What strategies can help me avoid excessive summary?

• Read the assignment (the prompt) as soon as you get it. Make sure to reread it before you start writing. Go back to your assignment often while you write. (Check out our handout on reading assignments ).
• Formulate an argument (including a good thesis) and be sure that your final draft is structured around it, including aspects of the plot, story, history, background, etc. only as evidence for your argument. (You can refer to our handout on constructing thesis statements ).
• Read critically—imagine having a dialogue with the work you are discussing. What parts do you agree with? What parts do you disagree with? What questions do you have about the work? Does it remind you of other works you’ve seen?
• Make sure you have clear topic sentences that make arguments in support of your thesis statement. (Read our handout on paragraph development if you want to work on writing strong paragraphs).
• Use two different highlighters to mark your paper. With one color, highlight areas of summary or description. With the other, highlight areas of analysis. For many college papers, it’s a good idea to have lots of analysis and minimal summary/description.
• Ask yourself: What part of the essay would be obvious to a reader/viewer of the work being discussed? What parts (words, sentences, paragraphs) of the essay could be deleted without loss? In most cases, your paper should focus on points that are essential and that will be interesting to people who have already read or seen the work you are writing about.

But I’m writing a review! Don’t I have to summarize?

That depends. If you’re writing a critique of a piece of literature, a film, or a dramatic performance, you don’t necessarily need to give away much of the plot. The point is to let readers decide whether they want to enjoy it for themselves. If you do summarize, keep your summary brief and to the point.

Instead of telling your readers that the play, book, or film was “boring,” “interesting,” or “really good,” tell them specifically what parts of the work you’re talking about. It’s also important that you go beyond adjectives and explain how the work achieved its effect (how was it interesting?) and why you think the author/director wanted the audience to react a certain way. (We have a special handout on writing reviews that offers more tips.)

If you’re writing a review of an academic book or article, it may be important for you to summarize the main ideas and give an overview of the organization so your readers can decide whether it is relevant to their specific research interests.

If you are unsure how much (if any) summary a particular assignment requires, ask your instructor for guidance.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Barnet, Sylvan. 2015. A Short Guide to Writing about Art , 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Corrigan, Timothy. 2014. A Short Guide to Writing About Film , 9th ed. New York: Pearson.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Zinsser, William. 2001. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction , 6th ed. New York: Quill.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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• How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

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 20 May 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/working-sources/how-to-write-a-summary/

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How to Summarize a Journal Article

Last Updated: February 21, 2024 Approved

Reading Article

Planning draft, writing summary, sample summaries.

This article was co-authored by Richard Perkins . Richard Perkins is a Writing Coach, Academic English Coordinator, and the Founder of PLC Learning Center. With over 24 years of education experience, he gives teachers tools to teach writing to students and works with elementary to university level students to become proficient, confident writers. Richard is a fellow at the National Writing Project. As a teacher leader and consultant at California State University Long Beach's Global Education Project, Mr. Perkins creates and presents teacher workshops that integrate the U.N.'s 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the K-12 curriculum. He holds a BA in Communications and TV from The University of Southern California and an MEd from California State University Dominguez Hills. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article has 24 testimonials from our readers, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 1,414,321 times.

Summarizing a journal article is presenting a focused overview of a research study published in a peer-reviewed, scholarly source. A journal article summary provides readers with a short descriptive commentary, giving them some insight into the article's focus. Writing and summarizing a journal article is a common task for college students and research assistants alike. With a little practice, you can learn to read the article effectively with an eye for summary, plan a successful summary, and write it to completion.

• The purpose of an abstract is to allow researchers to quickly scan a journal and see if specific research articles are applicable to the work they are doing. If you're collecting research on immune system responses in rodents, you'll be able to know in 100 words not only whether or not the research is in your field, but whether the conclusions back up your own findings, or differ from it.
• Remember that an abstract and an article summary are two different things, so an article summary that looks just like the abstract is a poor summary. [1] X Research source An abstract is highly condensed and cannot provide the same level of detail regarding the research and its conclusions that a summary can.

• You still need to go back and actually read the article after coming to the conclusion, but only if the research is still applicable. If you're collecting research, you may not need to digest another source that backs up your own if you're looking for some dissenting opinions.

• Look for words like hypothesis, results, typically, generally, or clearly to give you hints about which sentence is the thesis.
• Underline, highlight, or rewrite the main argument of the research in the margins. Keep yourself focused on this main point, so you'll be able to connect the rest of the article back to that idea and see how it works together.
• In the humanities, it's sometimes more difficult to get a clear and concise thesis for an article because they are often about complex, abstract ideas (like class in post-modern poetics, or feminist film, for example). If it's unclear, try to articulate it for yourself, as best as you can understand the author's ideas and what they're attempting to prove with their analysis.
• Try to analyze the author's tone, looking at some of the keywords that really tells you what they are trying to get across to you.

• Different areas of focus within a journal article will usually be marked with subsection titles that target a specific step or development during the course of the research study. The titles for these sub-sections are usually bold and in a larger font than the remaining text.
• Keep in mind that academic journals are often dry reading. Is it absolutely necessary to read through the author's 500 word proof of the formulas used in the glycerine solution fed to the frogs in the research study? Maybe, but probably not. It's usually not essential to read research articles word-for-word, as long as you're picking out the main idea, and why the content is there in the first place.

• These segments will usually include an introduction, methodology, research results, and a conclusion in addition to a listing of references.

• When you're first getting started, it's helpful to turn your filter off and just quickly write out what you remember from the article. These will help you discover the main points necessary to summarize.

• Depending on the research, you may want to describe the theoretical background of the research, or the assumptions of the researchers. In scientific writing, it's important to clearly summarize the hypotheses the researchers outlined before undertaking the research, as well as the procedures used in following through with the project. Summarize briefly any statistical results and include a rudimentary interpretation of the data for your summary.
• In humanities articles, it's usually good to summarize the fundamental assumptions and the school of thought from which the author comes, as well as the examples and the ideas presented throughout the article.

• Any words or terms that the author coins need to be included and discussed in your summary.

• As a general rule of thumb, you can probably make one paragraph per main point, ending up with no more than 500-1000 words, for most academic articles. For most journal summaries, you'll be writing several short paragraphs that summarize each separate portion of the journal article.

• In scientific articles, usually there is an introduction which establishes the background for the experiment or study, and won't provide you with much to summarize. It will be followed by the development of a research question and testing procedures, though, which are key in dictating the content for the rest of the article.

• The specifics of the testing procedures don't usually need to be included in your summary in their entirety; they should be reduced to a simple idea of how the research question was addressed. The results of the study will usually be processed data, sometimes accompanied by raw, pre-process data. Only the processed data needs to be included in the summary.

• Make sure your summary covers the research question, the conclusions/results, and how those results were achieved. These are crucial parts of the article and cannot be left out.

• This is sometimes more important in summaries dealing with articles in the humanities. For example, it might be helpful to unpack dense arguments about poet George Herbert's relationship to the divine with more pedestrian summaries: "The author seeks to humanize Herbert by discussing his daily routines, as opposed to his philosophies."

• This can be difficult for some inexperienced research writers to get the hang of at first, but remember to keep the "I" out of it.

• Check verbs after writing. If you're using the same ones over and over, your reader will get bored. In this case, try to go back and really see if you can make really efficient choices.

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• ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/930/
• ↑ https://student.unsw.edu.au/writing-critical-review
• ↑ http://web.pdx.edu/~jduh/courses/faq/JouranlArticleSearch.htm
• ↑ http://web.cortland.edu/hendrick/journalarticle.pdf

About This Article

To summarize a journal article, start by reading the author's abstract, which tells you the main argument of the article. Next, read the article carefully, highlighting portions, identifying key vocabulary, and taking notes as you go. In your summary, define the research question, indicate the methodology used, and focus mostly on the results of the research. Use your notes to help you stay focused on the main argument and always keep your tone objective—avoid using personal pronouns and drawing your own conclusions. For tips on how to read through the journal article thoroughly, such as starting with the conclusion, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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King of the Hill Star Reveals How Freaky It Is Writing Reboot with 21-Year-Old Bobby for Creators

Pamela Adlon dishes about King of the Hill revival and how freaky it is for creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels to create grown-up Bobby.

• Pamela Adlon says, "It's been freakier for Mike [Judge] and Greg [Daniels] to think about Bobby going from 12 to being 21" for the upcoming revival.
• Adlon served as the voice of Bobby Hill for all 13 seasons of the FOX animated television series King of the Hill.
• Adlon's directorial debut, Babes, is now playing in select cinemas; the filmmaker dishes on the complex nature of friendships between those with and without children.

Pamela Adlon certainly has come a long way since playing the young, Pink Ladies' mascot Dolores in Grease 2 (1982). Over the years, the Hollywood mainstay has put together an impressive resume spanning over 40 years, with some of her most prolific work coming on the TV shows Recess, Californication, Louie, and Better Things. However, most fans know Adlon as the voice of Bobby from King of the Hill. And in an exclusive interview with MovieWeb, Adlon reveals "it's been freakier" for the show’s creators, Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, having to write the revival’s 21-year-old version of Bobby. Adlon says:

“We're in the second season [creating] the reboot, and Bobby is 21. He's a chef in a fusion restaurant in Dallas. And it's been incredible. It's just been really fun. I think it's been freakier for Mike and Greg to think about Bobby going from 12 to being 21 and having a relationship and being a person." "But don't we all go through that with our kids and our friends' kids? It is shocking when I see my friends' kids, and they're all grown up. And I'm like, ‘Wait a second, what just happened?’ So, it’s just a little bit of a mess."

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King of the Hill's Adlon is currently working behind the camera, rather than voicing an animated character, as her first feature film as a director, Babes, opens in limited release this weekend. And it didn't take much convincing for Adlon to helm the project once she read the script from screenwriters Josh Rabinowitz and Ilana Glazer, who also stars in the comedy. Adlon said in the same interview:

"The script had all the elements of all the things I like to play with in comedy… like body dysmorphia, the women friendships, the dark, hairy, raw, gross stuff and the love and the heart. And to put it all in New York City, and I get to infuse the way I see things into New York City as a character.”

Pamela Adlon Dishes on Babes, Complicated Friendships

King of the Hill’s young Bobby will be all grown up in the show’s highly anticipated revival. And the actress who voices the animated character, Pamela Adlon, has certainly come a long way since her career kicked off in the early 1980s. In fact, Adlon is now making her directorial debut as she helms the brand-new comedy, Babes . And the filmmaker reveals a bit about what fans can expect from the characters and the complications friendships face when children are involved. Adlon said in an interview with TIME :

“It’s inevitable that you lose people in your life because you’re sitting there at dinner with your childless friends, and your children are screaming, and your friends want to finish their story, and you have to do 70 other things. You’re like, ‘Let’s take a raincheck on this particular friendship.’

Adlon continued:

"With Eden [Ilana Glazer] and Dawn [Michelle Buteau], Dawn got the dream. She has the supportive dream husband, the dream house, the dream kids, and she feels like she got slammed into a brick wall. How do you deal with that when you theoretically have every blessing, but you feel like you’re walking through molasses? The idea that you could actually have a conversation with your friend and find a way through it — that’s what I hope for your generation.”

Babes Review: Pamela Adlon (Better Things) Delivers Comedy Gold in a Raunchy BFF Laugh Fest

Babes is among five new movies which opened this weekend. The others ( The Strangers: Chapter 1, Back to Black, The Blue Angels ), including this week’s No. 1 movie IF, all found their respective ways into the Top 10. Adlon’s comedy only dropped in limited release (12 cinemas), though. Nevertheless, Babes did boast the best per-theater average during its opening weekend with $14,277 per venue.

Check out more of Pamela Adlon’s interview with MovieWeb right now. The King of the Hill revival doesn't have an official release date, but should drop on Hulu in 2025. Babes is in theaters as of May 17, 2024, and will expand to more theaters on May 24.

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Trump Leads in 5 Key States, as Young and Nonwhite Voters Express Discontent With Biden

A new set of Times/Siena polls, including one with The Philadelphia Inquirer, reveal an erosion of support for the president among young and nonwhite voters upset about the economy and Gaza.

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were held today , who would you

vote for if the candidates were

Joe Biden and Donald Trump ?

Pennsylvania

Margin of error

If the 2024 presidential election were held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Joe Biden and Donald Trump ?

By Nate Cohn

Donald J. Trump leads President Biden in five crucial battleground states, a new set of polls shows , as a yearning for change and discontent over the economy and the war in Gaza among young, Black and Hispanic voters threaten to unravel the president’s Democratic coalition.

The surveys by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found that Mr. Trump was ahead among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup against Mr. Biden in five of six key states: Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden led among registered voters in only one battleground state, Wisconsin.

[You can find the full results of the polls, including the exact questions that were asked, here . You can see answers to common questions about our polling process here .]

The race was closer among likely voters. Mr. Trump led in five states as well, but Mr. Biden edged ahead in Michigan while trailing only narrowly in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. While Mr. Biden won all six of those states in 2020, victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin would be enough for him to win re-election, provided he won everywhere else he did four years ago.

The results were similar in a hypothetical matchup that included minor-party candidates and the independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who won an average of 10 percent of the vote across the six states and drew roughly equally from the two major-party candidates.

The findings are mostly unchanged since the last series of Times/Siena polls in battleground states in November. Since then, the stock market has gained 25 percent, Mr. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan has started, and the Biden campaign has unleashed tens of millions of dollars in advertisements across the battleground states.

The polls offer little indication that any of these developments have helped Mr. Biden, hurt Mr. Trump or quelled the electorate’s discontent. Instead, the surveys show that the cost of living, immigration, Israel’s war in Gaza and a desire for change continue to be a drag on the president’s standing. While Mr. Biden benefited from a burst of momentum in the wake of his State of the Union address in March, he continues to trail in the average of national and battleground state polls.

How support for the candidates differ

between registered and likely voters

The findings reveal widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the country and serious doubts about Mr. Biden’s ability to deliver major improvements to American life. A majority of voters still desire the return to normalcy promised by Mr. Biden in the last campaign, but voters in battleground states remain particularly anxious, unsettled and itching for change. Nearly 70 percent of voters say that the country’s political and economic systems need major changes — or even to be torn down entirely.

Only a sliver of Mr. Biden’s supporters — just 13 percent — believe that the president would bring major changes in his second term, while even many of those who dislike Mr. Trump grudgingly acknowledge that he would shake up an unsatisfying status quo.

The sense that Mr. Biden would do little to improve the nation’s fortunes has helped erode his standing among young, Black and Hispanic voters, who usually represent the foundation of any Democratic path to the presidency. The Times/Siena polls found that the three groups wanted fundamental changes to American society, not just a return to normalcy, and few believed that Mr. Biden would make even minor changes that would be good for the country.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are essentially tied among 18-to-29-year-olds and Hispanic voters, even though each group gave Mr. Biden more than 60 percent of their vote in 2020. Mr. Trump also wins more than 20 percent of Black voters — a tally that would be the highest level of Black support for any Republican presidential candidate since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The polls suggest that Mr. Trump’s strength among young and nonwhite voters has at least temporarily upended the electoral map, with Mr. Trump surging to a significant lead in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada — relatively diverse Sun Belt states where Black and Hispanic voters propelled Mr. Biden to signature victories in the 2020 election.

Mr. Biden nonetheless remains within striking distance. He has maintained most of his support among older and white voters, who are much less likely to demand fundamental changes to the system and far likelier to say that democracy is the most important issue for their vote. As a result, Mr. Biden is more competitive in the three relatively white Northern swing states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The economy and the cost of living, however, remain the most important issues for one-quarter of voters — and a significant drag on Mr. Biden’s prospects. More than half of voters still believe that the economy is “poor,” down merely a single percentage point since November despite cooling inflation, an end to rate hikes and significant stock market gains.

Nearly 40 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said that the economy or the cost of living was the most important issue in the election, among them Jennifer Wright, a registered nurse in Sterling Heights, Mich. She supported Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020, and to her the election comes down to one question: “Who is the best candidate who is going to help me be in a financial situation to retire?”

“Even me, as a registered nurse, I’m buying Kroger brand or store brand. I’m not buying Jif. We’ve all had to cut back,” she said.

The Biden administration’s insistence that the economy is faring well has fallen flat for many voters, including Jacob Sprague, 32, who works as a systems engineer in Reno, Nev. He says that he voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but will not be doing so this time.

“It is concerning to me when I keep seeing press come out of the White House where they keep saying the economy is good,” Mr. Sprague said. “That’s really weird because I’m paying more on taxes and more on groceries and more on housing and more on fuel. So that doesn’t feel good.”

With less than six months to go until the election, there is still time for an improving economy to lift Mr. Biden’s standing. Historically, polls at this early stage have not been necessarily indicative of the outcome, and Mr. Trump’s breakthrough among traditionally Democratic young, Black and Hispanic voters may not rest on a solid foundation. His strength is concentrated among irregular, disengaged voters who do not pay close attention to politics and may not yet be tuned into the race. They may be prone to shift their views as the race gets underway.

In a finding that will frustrate Democrats, even as it presents opportunity for Mr. Biden, nearly 20 percent of voters blame him more than they do Mr. Trump for the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade. They may be the kind of voters that the Biden campaign hopes to persuade as the campaign heats up.

The polls showed that abortion loomed as one of Mr. Trump’s biggest vulnerabilities. On average, 64 percent of voters in battleground states said that abortion should be always or mostly legal, including 44 percent of Mr. Trump’s own supporters.

In recent weeks, the Biden campaign has sought to emphasize Mr. Trump’s support for the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. For now, though, voters preferred Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump to handle the issue of abortion by 11 points, 49 to 38 percent.

A bigger challenge for Mr. Biden than disengaged voters may ultimately be the disaffected and the disillusioned — those who desire fundamental changes to American society, or who believe that the political and economic systems need to be torn down altogether. Not long ago, these anti-system voters might have been reliably Democratic, but Mr. Trump’s anti-establishment populist brand of conservatism has flipped the usual political dynamic.

Seventy percent of voters believe that Mr. Trump will either bring major changes to the political or economic system or tear down the systems altogether, compared with 24 percent who expect the same from Mr. Biden. And while many voters express deep reservations about Mr. Trump personally, 43 percent of voters believe that he will bring good changes to the country, compared with 35 percent who think the changes will be bad.

Most Americans think the system

needs to change …

Which comes closest to your view about

the political and economic system in America,

even if none are exactly right?

The system needs ...

... no changes 2%

Don’t know/

declined to say 2%

… and they think that Donald Trump

would bring more change …

If [this candidate] won the election, do you think

nothing would change, there would be minor

changes to how things work, there would be

major changes to how things work, or he would

tear down the system completely?

would change

Minor changes

declined to say 4%

… but they are split on whether that

change would be good or bad.

Do you think the changes that [this candidate]

would make would be good for the country

or bad for the country, or neither good nor bad?

or very good

or very bad

declined to say 5%

Most Americans think the system needs to change …

Which comes closest to your view about the political and economic

system in America, even if none are exactly right?

... major changes

... minor changes

… and they think that Donald Trump would bring more change …

If [this candidate] won the election, do you think nothing would change,

there would be minor changes to how things work, there would be major

changes to how things work, or he would tear down the system completely?

… but they are split on whether that change would be good or bad.

Do you think the changes that [this candidate] would make would be good

for the country or bad for the country, or neither good nor bad?

Mr. Trump fares especially well among those who believe that the political and economic systems ought to be torn down, a group that represents about 15 percent of registered voters. He leads among these anti-system voters by 32 points, and the tear-it-down voters are especially likely to have defected from the president. In contrast, Mr. Biden retains nearly all of his 2020 supporters who believe only minor changes are necessary.

These change voters are not necessarily demanding a more ideologically progressive agenda. In the last Times/Siena poll of the same states, 11 percent of registered voters thought that Mr. Biden was not progressive or liberal enough. And while many liberal or progressive voters want major changes, relatively few of those voters are defecting from Mr. Biden.

Instead, Mr. Biden’s losses are concentrated among moderate and conservative Democratic-leaning voters, who nonetheless think that the system needs major changes or to be torn down altogether. Mr. Trump wins just 2 percent of Mr. Biden’s “very liberal” 2020 voters who think the system at least needs major changes, compared with 16 percent of those who are moderate or conservative.

One exception is Israel’s war in Gaza, an issue on which most of Mr. Biden’s challenge appears to come from his left. Around 13 percent of the voters who say they voted for Mr. Biden last time, but do not plan to do so again, said that his foreign policy or the war in Gaza was the most important issue to their vote. Just 17 percent of those voters reported sympathizing with Israel over the Palestinians.

Gerard Willingham, 30, works as a web administrator and lives in Riverdale, Ga. He voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, but he plans to vote for a third-party candidate in November because of the president’s response to the conflict in Gaza, the issue about which he cares most right now.

“I think it’s made quite a bit of difference in that it made me more heavily than in the past push toward voting for a third party, even if I feel that the candidates almost 100 percent won’t win,” Mr. Willingham said. “It’s starting to reach into my moral conscience, I guess.”

Mr. Trump’s trial in Manhattan, on charges that he falsified business records related to a hush-money payment to cover up an affair with the adult film star Stormy Daniels, was already underway when the polls began in late April. However, the survey offered little indication that the trial had damaged the former president’s political fortunes, at least so far. Just 29 percent of voters in battleground states said that they were paying “a lot” of attention to Mr. Trump’s legal woes, and 35 percent thought that the trial was likely to end in a conviction.

Alyce McFadden contributed reporting.

Here are the key things to know about how these polls were conducted:

We spoke with 4,097 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from April 28 to May 9, 2024.

Our polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Nearly 95 percent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for this poll. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here .

Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For this set of polls, we placed nearly 500,000 calls to about 410,000 voters.

To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of our respondents and the weighted sample on the methodology page , under “Composition of the Sample.”

When the states are joined together, the margin of sampling error among registered voters is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points. Each state poll has a margin of error ranging from plus or minus 3.6 points in Pennsylvania to plus or minus 4.6 points in Georgia. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When computing the difference between two values — such as a candidate’s lead in a race — the margin of error is twice as large.

You can see full results and a detailed methodology here . If you want to read more about how and why we conduct our polls, you can see answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own questions here .

The New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll of Pennsylvania was funded by a grant from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The poll was designed and conducted independently from the institute.

Nate Cohn is The Times’s chief political analyst. He covers elections, public opinion, demographics and polling. More about Nate Cohn