In the two previous subsections the notes that have resulted from our reading of the sources have been brief, sketchy, and abstract. They have not attempted to follow the line of argument presented by the original author; rather, they have simply picked out pieces of useful information or lines of inquiry to be followed and recorded them in the briefest possible form. Most notes are taken in this way.There are occasions, however, when it is useful or necessary to stick more closely to the original and to preserve something of the progression of the argument from the source. The process of reproducing another writer's text in your own words without attempting to reduce the length of the passage substantially is known as paraphrasing. If you set out to reproduce another writer's ideas and arguments but at considerably less length and in less detail, then you are summarizing it.Producing a paraphrase or a summary sometimes constitutes a writing task in its own right, but the skills involved in making an effective paraphrase or summary are closely related to those required for taking notes. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, when you are assembling your materials prior to beginning, you may well want to have available a closer approximation to the structure source author's own text than is provided by ordinary notes. We shall therefore deal with these processes here.ParaphrasingThe art of paraphrasing consists of re-creating an original text in its entirety using your own words, not those of the author. It can be particularly useful if your reader might have difficulty in following the original text or if the style of the original text is markedly different from the style you are employing for your own piece and you want to make it fit in. When paraphrasing, you should, as much as possible, avoid quoting from the original. If the author uses a particularly distinctive word or phrase that you wish to retain, then you should put it in quotation marks. At the same time, you should remember that because you are going to be using different words, you may inadvertently alter the original author's meaning if you are not careful.Paraphrasing is distinct from quoting insofar as you do not use the source author's own words. Nonetheless, paraphrased material needs to be attributed to the person who first produced it, otherwise, even though you are using your own words, you are effectively plagiarizing someone else's work. The easiest way to avoid this pitfall is to treat a paraphrase as if it were a piece of reported speech (in other words, X says/states that …).The need to utilize a reporting verb (for example, to say, confirm, express, report, and so on) plus that is something that you can use to your advantage. You can and should try to suggest the tone of the passage you are paraphrasing or the author's attitude toward the information he or she is presenting through your choice of verb. To begin by writing "X says/states that …" tells us very little about X's tone. This is perfectly acceptable if the material is neutral in tone or does not represent a particular stage in an argument. If the passage has an emotional quality, however, you can help to convey this by beginning "X complains that …," "X insists that …," "X gleefully asserts that …," or whatever fits the context. Similarly, if the author is presenting an argument or responding to arguments put forward by someone else, you can register that fact by saying "X argues that …," "X admits that …," "X counters this argument by suggesting that …"Following as an example of a text that you might want to paraphrase, is a passage from a letter written by Charles Dickens to his biographer, John Forster, and reproduced in the latter's The Life of Charles Dickens. Dickens is describing and commenting on a banquet he attended in Boston:It was a most superb affair; and the speaking admirable. Indeed, the general talent for public speaking here, is one of the most striking of the things that force themselves upon an Englishman's notice. As every man looks on to being a member of Congress, every man prepares himself for it; and the result is quite surprising. You will observe one odd custom—the drinking of sentiments. It is quite extinct with us, but here everybody is expected to be prepared with an epigram as a matter of course (Forster, n.d., 427). The letter was written in 1842. The style is therefore old-fashioned, but Dickens records his impressions with characteristic vigor. In paraphrasing, we should attempt to keep the vigor, if possible, but remove the old-fashioned feel. We also need to ensure that we understand exactly what Dickens is talking about. He mentions a custom, "the drinking of sentiments," that was "extinct" in Britain even then and is so far out of fashion nowadays in the United States that Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary does not even record this sense of the word sentiment. A sentiment, to quote the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, was "an epigrammatical expression of some striking or agreeable thought or wish announced in the manner of a toast." The Shorter Oxford illustrates its definition by quoting from the Irish dramatist R. B. Sheridan's comedy School for Scandal, (1777), in which the rakish Charles Surface says to a moneylender of his acquaintance: "Come, Mr. Premium, I'll give you a sentiment: here's Success to usury!" However, "the drinking of sentiments" is probably just the kind of distinctive phrase that, as has been said, could be quoted directly.This is a weak paraphrase that borrows from the original. In this instance then, we should avoid anything such as the following:Dickens says that the dinner was a superb affair and notes that the speaking was "admirable," commenting particularly on the fact that Americans, unlike Englishmen, have a talent for public speaking. The word admirable has been put in quotation marks presumably because Dickens (or Forster) italicized it in the original. Italics were used, however, not to highlight a particular quality of the speaking, but to emphasize how much Dickens enjoyed and appreciated the speeches that were given. Admirable is not in itself a distinctive term. It does not really merit quotation, especially since so much has been lifted from the original ("a [most] superb affair," "talent for public speaking") that, for consistency's sake and honesty's sake, quotation marks should have been used far more widely. In addition, Dickens does not say that Americans are good at public speaking and Englishmen are not. He says that he, as an Englishman, is impressed by how widespread the capacity for public speaking is among Americans, which is a somewhat different thing.A better paraphrase might read something like this:Dickens enthused to Forster about the dinner. He was particularly impressed by the ordinary American's ability to stand up and make a speech in public. He attributed this talent to the fact that every American aspired to become a member of Congress and took care to acquire the skills necessary for public office. In this context, he called Forster's attention to the custom of "the drinking of sentiments" (making a witty or epigrammatic toast), which had been preserved in America whereas it had died out in England. Every diner, he observed, had an appropriate epigram ready. This example employs the simple method of distancing the paraphrase from the original through the use of the past tense. The tense you adopt for a paraphrase depends mainly on the tense you are using for the rest of your text. It would be perfectly possible to put the above passage into the present tense or to make an equally effective but different paraphrase using the present. However, the fact that the bulk of Dickens's original is in the present tense increases the temptation to borrow his words. Shifting the tense makes you think twice before succumbing to that temptation.When you have completed a paraphrase, you should always check it against the original to ensure that you have not omitted anything important. In this case, everything seems to have been covered, but you might feel that underlying Dickens's appreciation of the general talent for public speaking and his comment that "every man looks on to being a member of Congress" is an awareness of the democratic nature of American society (compared to 19th-century Britain) that enables every man (not yet every person!) to harbor political ambitions. It would not, perhaps, be stretching things too far to make that explicit in the paraphrase.SummarizingThe art of summarizing is slightly more complicated than that of paraphrasing, simply because it involves reducing the length of the source passage considerably. The length of a summary will vary depending on particular requirements, but generally speaking, a summary should be between a quarter and a third of the length of the original. To put that perhaps more cogently, you will need to dispense with between two-thirds and three-quarters of the bulk of your source passage. Under these conditions, there is seldom any reason to keep the wording of the original. You must have the confidence to use your own words, just as when paraphrasing.The ability to compose a good summary is a useful skill for a writer, not merely in the preparatory stages of the writing process, which we are mainly concerned with here, but also in the latter stages. You may very well have to reduce the bulk of your own work when revising it. Book and newspaper publishers frequently stipulate the maximum number of words they require, and you can easily find yourself in the position of having to pare down, if not boil down, your text to fit the space available. Similarly, business reports often have to fit in a very few pages. It is also often useful to provide a summary of your argument at the end of a longer piece of writing; indeed, a summarizing conclusion is a favorite way of winding up a lecture, report, or dissertation.The standard method for making a summary involves identifying the main points in a passage, writing them down in note form, then making a plan and drafting a brief text on the basis of those notes. In some respects, therefore, it constitutes a condensed version of several aspects of the writing process as a whole, particularly those we have been dealing with in the present section. To illustrate the technique, let us take the passage below, currently consisting of 284 words, and reduce it to a summary of not more than 100 words.The transcontinental railroads constructed after the Civil War did more than open up the West for further settlement and for the commercial exploitation of its vast natural resources. They also established it as a tourist destination. Easterners already familiar with stories of the heroic struggles of the pioneers and of the sublime, empty landscapes in which they lived out their rugged and exciting lives were now to be given the chance to experience the adventure for themselves. As early as 1871, the Northern Pacific Railroad commissioned the painter Thomas Moran and the photographer William Henry Harvey to accompany a surveying expedition to the Yellowstone region. The images they brought back were reproduced in guidebooks and brochures available from railroad stations and offices in the East. Other railroad companies were not slow to follow Northern Pacific's lead and publicize the dramatic scenery to be enjoyed along their own routes. Not content with supplying evocative imagery of the West, the railroad companies, often in collaboration with other entrepreneurs, created a complete tourist infrastructure that linked railroads with hotels and local transportation to major sites. They were also at pains to ensure that the environments the tourists found when they reached their destinations were fully in keeping with their preconceived notions of the West. They frequently themed the buildings they erected and the services they set up. The Santa Fe Railway and the Fred Harvey Company built the Hopi House at the Grand Canyon, modeled on a traditional Native American dwelling. Travelers en route to Yellowstone with Northern Pacific were met at Gardiner station by yellow stagecoaches. The accommodations provided by Great Northern to visitors of Glacier National Park took the form of Swiss-style chalets or log cabins. The first task, as always, is to read through the whole passage carefully and make sure that we have understood it. We then identify and note down its main points, the essential ideas or pieces of information that the writer wishes to convey to the reader. In this instance we might take them to be the following:1. The railroads opened up the West for tourism
2. They had pictures made of the West to be used for marketing purposes
3. Railroad and other companies created a tourist infrastructure
4. Their aim was to preserve the popular image of the West
5. They shaped buildings, etc., to fit in with this image As always, we should try to express these main points in our own words. The original text, for example, does not use the word marketing, but it would seem to be a word that accurately describes what was going on. Nor does the text use the term tourist infrastructure, but it is very difficult to think of an alternative that expresses the same idea with equal economy. We do not have many words at our disposal, so we have to generalize and boil down the text to its essentials. A phrase such as "the popular image of the West" will have to suffice for all the various things that the passage says or implies about the way Easterners thought about the West. When taking notes on the main points, we are already beginning to condense the passage.Once we have established the main points in the passage and noted them as concisely as possible, we next have to flesh them out with some key details. To say that, however, immediately poses the question, what constitutes a key detail? What distinguishes a detail that you ought to retain from one that you ought to discard?In this particular case, we can leave out most of the names. The passage does not center itself on any one particular instance of the phenomenon it is telling us about; it is concerned with the phenomenon as such and uses specific examples to illustrate its points. Though the writer specifically mentions various railroad companies, the passage is not about one company's activities, but about an activity that all the transcontinental railroads engaged in. In our summary, therefore, we can generalize by referring simply to "the railroads" or "the railroad companies," without doing violence to the passage's basic meaning. And we shall also, probably, have to find some way of making reference to the tourist sites in general terms for the same reason. Obviously, too, "the painter Thomas Moran and the photographer William Henry Harvey" will have to become "a painter and a photographer," if they merit a mention in our summary.So much for the kind of thing we might leave out. What do we put in? Take the first main point as an example: "The railroads opened up the West for tourism." That is fair enough as a restatement of the author's theme, but it is a very bald restatement. It needs some context. It might sound as if the main purpose of the railroads' westward drive was to develop the tourist trade, which it self-evidently was not. Tourist business was an important and valuable business but subsidiary to the principal commercial purpose. The author acknowledges as much, and our summary ought to find space to do the same. Likewise, this process took place at a specific time in history. The passage uses the phrase "after the Civil War" and mentions one specific date, 1871. These dates, however, give the starting point for the process, which must have extended over a good many years. It is probably better, then, to think of these developments happening during a particular period rather than at a precise time in history and to choose as our key detail a phrase that suggests as much—perhaps "during the later years of the 19th century" or "during the final decades of the 19th century."An extended plan of main points plus key details might therefore look something like the example that follows:- The railroads opened up the West for tourism
— not simply for settlement and trade
— during later years of the 19th century - They had pictures made of the West to be used for marketing purposes
— painter and photographer sent to Yellowstone
— brochures and guidebooks sold in the East - Railroad and other companies created a tourist infrastructure
— stations linked to hotels, transportation - Their aim was to preserve the popular image of the West
— heroic frontier life, unspoiled wilderness, scenic grandeur - They shaped buildings, etc., to fit in with this image
— Native American—style buildings, stagecoaches, etc.
Our second set of notes contains as many words as we were going to allow ourselves for the whole summary. Fortunately, setting material out as a list of notes is not usually the most compact way of presenting it. Writing it out in proper sentences can take fewer words.At this point we need to check our notes against the original passage to make sure that we have, in fact, covered all the essential points. Once we have made that check, however, the standard advice is to set the original passage aside and to write the summary on the basis of the notes and of the general sense of the material that we retain in our head.When free of the original, it is always worth checking that the order of main points is the most effective order. In this particular case, point 4 contains an idea that is really relevant to the passage as a whole. If there had not been a "popular image of the West," if Easterners had not been attracted by the idea of the frontier life, the railroad companies might never have had the idea of promoting tourism in the first place. The "popular image" is not simply linked to the provision of Western-style facilities around scenic sites. We might slip this information in at a different point, consequently—perhaps when the idea of tourism is mentioned.A summary of the passage in under 100 words might take this form:Railroad companies opened up the West not only for settlement and commerce, but also for tourism, exploiting Easterners' desire to experience the unspoiled scenic grandeur of the West and the exciting life of pioneers. These companies marketed the West through paintings and photographs published in brochures and guidebooks, and, often in partnership with other companies, created an infrastructure of hotels and transportation to service the main sites. They helped preserve the popular view of the West by, for example, constructing buildings modeled on Native American dwellings or log cabins and by using stagecoaches to transport visitors. This reproduces the essence of the original passage. We may, nevertheless, have the feeling that a good deal has been lost. It is easier to condense a piece of poor writing than a piece of good writing, because poor writing is often loosely structured and padded out with largely irrelevant material or simple verbiage. Tightening up the structure and removing the padding can only improve a passage. A well-organized piece that is succinctly written and where the ideas are illustrated by well-chosen examples will suffer more when filleted.It is worth noting that when we have to try to fit a large amount of information into a relatively small number of words, we often, of necessity, have to resort to longer and more formal words and more complex grammatical constructions than we might normally use. The phrase "exploiting Easterners' desire to experience" in our summary might be considered an example of compacting that is approaching the limits of what the ordinary reader might be comfortable with. If you are not constrained to a fixed number of words, then it is best to keep things simple, but it is also useful to be able to use complex words and constructions with confidence and clarity.To summarize, finally, the essential points in summarizing,- select the main points from the passage;
- add to these the key details needed to put the main points in context;
- check your notes against the original passage, then put the original aside;
- write your summary on the basis of your notes and your general impression of the passage;
- check your summary for clarity.
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