A summary summarizes a document, content or subject.
The verb resumere , a word that is part of Latin, we can establish that it is the etymological origin of the concept that we are going to analyze in depth below. A Latin term that translates as saying or explaining everything that the opposite has stated.
Summary is a concept that describes the action and the consequence of summarizing or being summarized . It is also the synthesized manifestation of a certain issue or matter .
What is a summary
A summary, therefore, can be defined as a brief and specific exposition of the content of a material that can be written or audiovisual in nature . This synthesis is limited to citing the most important ideas , that is, it excludes irrelevant data and does not provide space for subjective or critical interpretations nor does it include the identity of the person who carried out the analysis.
In this way, we can establish that one of the areas where summaries are most frequently carried out is in education. And it is that students, either because they decide freely or because their teachers request it, it is common for them to make summaries of the different topics that make up the subjects because it is a way for them to study in a more effective and practical way. .
Thus, for example, we could present the following sentence: “Manuel made a summary of the unit on the conquest of America in order to assimilate all the aspects of said historical event for the History exam.”
Main features
The summary, if prepared correctly, reflects a marked objective profile and presents a general concept, where the basic notions and some secondary ones are presented (only when they are necessary for the understanding of the main ones). The person responsible for the summary must find a common thread that unites the essential phrases of the base text.
According to the most common way of making a summary, the most important parts of the text are underlined to highlight the most significant ideas and identify key words. In the next step, the underlined is outlined .
We can also highlight that when making a summary we have to take into account that it is made up of a series of elements that are essential since they are responsible for giving it not only a structure but also a meaning. Specifically, we can say that this is made up of a heading where it is common for data such as title or author to appear, the body which is actually what can be called a summary as such, the classification which is not always mandatory, and finally the signature of who does that one.
It is common for a student to make summaries to promote the assimilation of knowledge.
Summary Types
There are different types of summary: the informative summary is one where a text and the message of the communication are abbreviated; The descriptive summary , on the other hand, is responsible for delving into the structure of the writing, with its fundamental parts, sources and style; Finally, the abstract summary is a variant of the descriptive summary, which heads scientific articles and whose function is to inform about the content of the text so that potential readers can have a general idea in a short time.
It must be taken into account that a synthesis is the summary of different texts related to the same topic or that can be compared by topics linked to each other. Synthesis is a textual reduction technique that offers the possibility of bringing together the essential elements of more than one text to obtain a coherent summary.