Summarizing
An author may have a complex idea or a series of related ideas that you need to summarize in order to talk about them. When summarizing, you will use your own words and may include direct quotations of pertinent points that the author phrases particularly well. When summarizing be careful not to accidentally quote the author by using idiosyncratic terms or phrases without noting them. If you use a summary, precede it with a signal phrase to show what you are doing.
An example of summarizing:
This is an example of a student using a summary of the original text used in the paraphrasing examples above:
Ugoretz' assertion that the vocabulary of surrealism is mainly drawn from dream analysis is directly in conflict with Arnason's view. Arnason credits Ernst with inventing a lot of surrealist vocabulary through his looking at biological drawings (p. 243).
Note that the summary only delivers the most important ideas/facts and doesn't give details. Also note that Arnason's name is used and the page number is given.
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