How to write a summary

1. Read the article.

2. Re-read the article. Underline important ideas. Circle key terms. Find the main point of the article. Divide the article into sections or stages of thought, and label each section or stage of thought in the margins. Note the main idea of each paragraph if the article is short.

3. Write brief summaries of each stage of thought or if appropriate each paragraph. Use a separate piece of paper for this step. This should be a brief outline of the article.

4. Write the main point of the article. Use your own words. This should be a sentence that expresses the central idea of the article as you have determined it the from steps above.

5. Write your rough draft of the summary. Combine the information from the first four steps into paragraphs.

NOTE: ü Include all the important ideas.

	ü Use the author's key words.
	ü Follow the original organization where possible.
	ü Include any important data.
	ü Include any important conclusions.

6. Edit your version. Be concise. Eliminate needless words and repetitions. (Avoid using "the author says...," "the author argues...," etc.)

7. Compare your version to the original.

	ü Do not use quotations, but if you use them be sure to quote correctly. Indicate quotations with quotation marks. Cite each quotation correctly (give the page number).
	ü Do not plagiarize. Cite any paraphrases by citing the page number the information appears on. Avoid paraphrasing whenever possible. Use your own words to state the ideas presented in the article.

In the summary, you should include only the information your readers need.

1. State the main point first.

2. Use a lower level of technicality than the authors of the original article use. Do not write a summary your readers cannot understand.

3. Make the summary clear and understandable to someone who has not read the original article. Your summary should stand on its own.

4. Write a summary rather than a table of contents.

Wrong: This article covers point X. Then the article covers point Y.

Right: Glacial advances have been rapid as shown by x, y, and z.

5. Add no new data and none of your own ideas.

6. Use a simple organization:

	ü main point
	ü main results: give the main results
	ü conclusions/recommendations

7. Unless the examples in the article are essential, do not include the examples in your summary. If you include them, remember to explain them.

Here is an easy way to begin a summary: In "[name of article]" [author] states.... [State the main point of the article first.] For example: In "Computer Chess"* Hans Berliner states that the CYBER 170 series computer can perform well in a chess tournament.

So when you write a summary:

1. State the main point f i rst.
2. Emphasize the main stages of though.
3. State the article’s conclusion.
4. Summarize rather than give a table of contents.

E.g.
Wrong: This article covers the topic of measuring the extent of global deforestation. The article discusses reasons for concern, the technique, the results, and the project’s current goal.
Right: According to the author of “Seeing the Forest,” the extent of global deforestation was difficult to measure until satellite remote sensing techniques were applied. Measuring the extent of global deforestation is important because of concerns about global warming and species extinctions. The technique compares old infrared LANDSAT images with new images. The authors conclude the method is accurate and cost effective.

Original Text Someone is stealing your lifeby Michael Ventura(Excerpted from LA Weekly 26-Jan-90) Most American adults wake around 6 ot 7 in the morning. Get to work at 8 or9. Knock off around 5. Home again, 6-ish. Fifty weeks a year. For about 45years. Most are glad to have the work, but don't really choose it. They may dream,they may study and even train for work they intensely want; but sooner orlater, for most, that doesn't pan out. Then they take what they can and makedo. Most have families to support, so they need their jobs more than theirjobs admit to needing them. They're employees. And, as employees, most haveno say whatsoever about much of anything on the job. The purpose or service,the short and long-term goals of the company, are considered quite literally"none of their business" - though these issues drastically influence everyaspect of their lives. No matter that they've given years to the day-to-daysurvival of the business; employees (even when they're called "managers")mostly take orders. Or else. It seems an odd way to structure a free society:Most people have little or no authority over what they do five days a weekfor 45 years. Doesn't sound much like "life, liberty, and the pursuit ofhappiness." Sounds like a nation of drones. It used to be that one's compensation for being an American drone was thefreedom to live in one's own house, in one's own quirky way, in a clean andsafe community in which your children had the chance to be happier, richerdrones than you. But working stiffs can't afford houses now, fewercommunities are clean, none are safe, and your kid's prospects are worse.(This condition may be because for five days a week, for 45 years, you had nosay - while other people have been making decisions that haven't been goodfor you.) I'm not sure whose happiness we've been pursuing lately, but onething is clear: It's not the happiness of those who've done our society'swork. On the other hand - or so they say - you're free, and if you don't like yourjob you can pursue happiness by starting a business of your very own, bybecoming an "independent" entrepreneur. But you're only as independent asyour credit rating. And to compete in the business community, you'll findyourself having to treat others - your employees - as much like slaves as youcan get away with. Pay them as little as they'll tolerate and give them nosay in anything, because that's what's most efficient and profitable. Moneyis the absolute standard. Freedom, and the dignity and well-being of one'sfellow creatures, simply don't figure in the basic formula. This may seem a fairly harsh way to state the rules America now lives by. Butif I sound radical, it's not from doing a lot of reading in some cozyuniversity, then dashing off to dispense opinion as a prima donna of thealternative press. I learned about drones by droning. From ages 18 to 29(minus a few distracted months at college when I was 24) I worked the sort ofjobs that I expected to have all my life: typesetter for two years, tapetranscriber for three, proofreader (a grossly incompetent one) for a fewweeks, messenger for a few months, and secretary (yes, secretary) for a yearand a half. Then I stopped working steadily and the jobs got funkier:hospital orderly, vacuum-cleaner salesman, Jack-in-the-Box counterperson,waiter, nail hammerer, cement mixer, toilet scrubber, driver. It was during the years of office work that I caught on: I got two weeks'paid vacation per year. A year has 52 weeks. Even a comparatively unskilled,uneducated worker like me, who couldn't (still can't) do fractions or longdivision - even I had enough math to figure that two goes into 52... howmany times? Twenty-sic. Meaning it would take me 26 years on the job toaccumulate one year for myself. And I could only have that in 26 pieces, soit wouldn't even feel like a year. In other words, no time was truly mine. Myboss merely allowed me an illusion of freedom, a little space in which tocatch my breath, in between the 50 weeks that I lived that he owned. Myemployer uses 26 years of my life for every year I get to keep. And what do Iget in return for this enormous thing I am giving? What do I get in returnfor my life? A paycheck that's as skimpy as they can get away with. If I'm lucky, somehealth insurance. (If I'm really lucky, the employer's definition of "health"will include my teeth and my eyes - maybe even my mind.) And, in a trulyenlightened workplace, just enough pension or "profit-sharing" to keep mesweet but not enough to make life different. And that's it. Compare this to what my employer gets: If the company is successful, he (it'susually a he) gets a standard of living beyond my wildest dreams, includingwhat I would consider fantastic protection for his family, and a world ofaccess that I can only pitifully mimic by changing channels on my TV. Hisstandard of living wouldn't be possible without the labor of people like me -but my employer doesn't think that's a very significant fact. He certainlydoesn't think that this fact entitles me to any say about the business. Notto mention a significant share in ownership. Oh no. The business is his to dowith as he pleases, and he owns my work. Period. I don't mean that bosses don't work. Most work hard, and have thesatisfaction of knowning that what they do is thiers. Great. The problem is:What I do is theirs too. Yet if my companion workers and I didn't do what wedo - then nobody would be anybody's. So how come what we do is hardly ours?How come he can get rich while we're lucky to break even? How come he can doanything he wants with the company without consulting us, yet we do the bulkof the work and take the brunt of the consequences? The only answer provided is that the employer came up with the money to startthe enterprise in the first place; hence, he and his money people decideeverything and get all the benefits. Excuse me, but that seems a little unbalanced. It doesn't take into accountthat nothing happens unless work is done. Shouldn't it follow that, workbeing so important, the doers of that work deserve a more just formula formeasuring who gets what? There's no doubt that the people who risked orraised the money to form a company, or bail it out of trouble, deserve a fairreturn on their investment - but is it fair that they get everything? Ittakes more than investment and management to make a company live. It takesthe labor, skill, and talent of the people who do the company's work. Isn'tthat an investment? Doesn't it deserve a fair return, a voice, a share of thepower? I know this sounds awfully simplistic, but no school ever taught me anythingabout the ways of economics and power (perhaps because they didn't want me toknow), so I had to figure it out slowly, based on what I saw around me everyday. And I saw: That it didn't matter how long I worked or what a good job I did. I could getincremental raises, perhaps even medical benefits and a few bonuses, but Iwould not be allowed power over my own life - no power over the fundamentaldecisions on which my life depends. My future is in the hands of people whosenames I often don't know and whom I never meet. Their investment is the onlyfactor taken seriously. They feed on my work, on my life, but reserve forthemselves all power, perogative, and profit. Slowly, very slowly, I came to a conclusion that for me was fundamental: Myemploywers are stealing my life. They. Are. Stealing. My. Life. If the people who do the work don't own some part of the product, and don'thave any power over what happens to their enterprise - they are being robbed.And don't think for a minute that those who are robbing you don't know theyare robbing you. They know how much they get from you and how little theygive back. They are thieves. They are stealing your life. The assembly-line worker isn't responsible for the decimation of the Americanauto industry, for instance. Those responsible are those who've been hurtleast, executives and stockholders who, according to the Los Angeles Times,make 50 to 500 times what the assembly-line worker makes, but who've done amiserable job of managing. Yet it's the workers who suffer most. Layoffs,plant closings, and such are no doubt necessary - like the bumper stickerssay, shit happens - but it is not necessary that workers have no power in thefundamental management decisions involved. As a worker, I am not an "operating cost." I am how the job gets done. I amthe job. I am the company. Without me and my companion workers, there'snothing. I'm willing to take my lumps in a world in which little is certain,but I deserve a say. Not just some cosmetic "input," but significant power ingood times or bad. A place at the table where decisions are made. Nothingless is fair. So nothing less is moral. And if you, as owners or management or government, deny me this - then youare choosing not to be moral, and you are committing a crime against me. Doyou expect me not to struggle? Do you expect us to be forever passive while you get rich stealing our lives?

Summary

In “Someone Is Stealing Your Life” (The LA Weekly, 26 Jan. 1990), Michael Ventura argues that American workers are being treated as slaves, and calls on employers to value the contribution of workers to the success of companies. For the majority of Americans, the ideal that the individual is free to find his or her own happiness is an illusion. Employees have no control over any aspect of their work and the living standards that they are able to achieve by working have declined. Those who wish to control their working lives do so by becoming employers, but in order to become profitable, they have to exploit their workers to the full. The author accepts that successful entrepreneurs deserve high rewards for their hard work and the risks they have taken. He also recognizes the role played by investors. However, he argues that the success of a company derives from the hard work of the employees as well. They deserve to share in the rewards and they should also be involved in major company decisions since these affect their lives. The author asserts that his view is worth of consideration because it is based on his experience in a variety of lower paid jobs, not on academic study.

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