How do you write a summary?

Keep who did what. Drop feelings, extra counts, and the when, unless that is the news. One sentence is enough. You can cut further to a headline, or to five of the sentence's own words.

What is an example of a good summary?

An elephant raided a shop for sweets. The long sentence had a freezer, a trunk, Thailand, ten bags and ten minutes. None of those are the event.

How do you start a summary?

Start with the person or thing that acted. Do not start with "This article is about" or "The author discusses".

What is a one-sentence summary?

The whole event in one sentence. You may add small glue words such as a, the, in. You may not add a fact that is not in the original.

How is keep-five different from a summary?

Keep-five uses only words from the sentence, in any order. A one-sentence summary may add glue and change the tense. A headline is shorter still, often in the present.

English resources/Summary writing

How to write a summary

Keep the event. Drop the decoration. One sentence, a headline, or five of the sentence's own words.

sheets.works/english/summary-writing

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People indoors, one of them reading a newspaper — The Latest News. After a painting by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf Bülow von Dennewitz. Die Gartenlaube, 1898. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

How to run this

Project one sentence. Two minutes. They write a one-sentence summary, then a headline, then five words. Show a model. Then play today's.

One sentencethe whole event Headlinesone line Keep fiveonly its words Worksheetstwelve old sentences Answersone cut each Today's live onethe game

What a summary is

A summary is who did what, with the extra words gone.

1Who did it.
2What they did.
3What it happened to, if there is one.
4Drop feelings, extra counts, and the when, unless that is the news.

A long sentence, cut three ways

Pushing the freezer aside with his trunk, a wild elephant raided a small shop near Thailand's Khao Yai park for sweets, eating ten bags in ten minutes.

Not a summary

A wild elephant in Thailand used its trunk to move a freezer and then ate ten bags of sweets in a shop in ten minutes.

One sentence

An elephant raided a shop for sweets.

Headline

Elephant raids shop for sweets

Five of its words

elephantraidedshopforsweets

The freezer is furniture. Ten bags is a count. Thailand is where. The event is the raid.

Another one

One judge, deliberating late and alone, delayed the famous high profile trial.

Not a summary

A judge sat alone at night thinking hard about a famous case.

One sentence

A judge delayed a high profile trial.

Five of its words

judgedelayedhighprofiletrial

The first version kept the room and dropped the news.

How you start

Start with the person or thing that acted. Do not start with the article.

This article is about an elephant.

Names the job. Does not do it.

The author discusses a raid.

There is no author in the sentence. There is an elephant.

In this passage we learn that sweets were eaten.

That is the eating. Not who, and not the shop.

An elephant raided a shop for sweets.

Starts with who. Then the verb. Then the thing.

What to drop

A feeling you cannot check. A count you can change without changing the story. A word that repeats a word you already kept. The when, unless the when is the news.

Kids keep "ten thousand" and "safely" and "finally". Those are the bait.

Three cuts, same job

One sentenceGlue is fine. New facts are not.
HeadlineOne line. Often present tense. No "a" or "the" if you can help it.
Keep fiveOnly words from the sentence. Order can change.

Print the worksheets if the room has no phones. Today's sentence is not on that sheet.

The same job on a book

Each Macbeth scene on this site is cut the same way. Act 1, Scene 7: Lady Macbeth shames him into the murder. That is a summary. The soliloquy is the long version.

If they finish early, open a sentence starter and hang it on a quote from this week's book. Or play today's.

Now play today's Long Story ShortOne real news sentence. Keep five of its words. Two minutes. Free. No login.Play now