Guidelines for Writing a Summary     Here are some basic guidelines for writing a summary (which I will use as the criteria for grading the final draft of your summary):      1)     Focus your attention on what the author does, not on what the author writes “about”: Remember that a summary is a descriptive account of what an author does. You are describing the author’s moves: “the author claims that,” “the author takes issue with what others describe as ____,”  etc.. Your choice of descriptive verb (acknowledging, claiming that, observing that, etc.) is therefore an important part of this assignment.     2)  Explain connections between the different moves you describe: A summary of an argument should aim to represent a structured set of moves, and should therefore try to represent the function of each local move within that larger project. Your task, then, is to describe the author’s key moves and (at the same time) explain how they relate to each other within a logical progression.  Here is an example of a summary that explains the connection between different moves: “The author considers the example of X in order to raise questions about what he calls ‘the invisible mending model’ of emergency response.” (Note how the phrase “in order to” explains why the author considers this example – the author does X so that she can go on to do Y…)       Note that your summary does not need to represent the order in which those moves occur in the text.  For example, the author’s thesis might appear in the concluding paragraph of the text … but in your summary, you might want to paraphrase/quote the thesis as your first move.      3)   Identify and attribute the source of all the moves (and all quoted language) that you choose to summarize:  Remember to refer to the author by their full name or their last name (not first name alone).  Keep in mind that some of what you will need to summarize in an argument will consist of the author’s own summary (and critique) of a view that in your summary needs to be carefully distinguished the author’s own view.  You will therefore need to phrase your summary carefully, so as to distinguish between the views and the language that the author uses and the views and the language of the third-party outside source that the author summarizes and critiques.  (The “what” clause is one useful attribution device: “Mary raises questions about what Jim calls the ‘new normal’…”) 4)   Use descriptive language that is both accurate and precise:  Precision and accuracy are two separate but equally important qualities of a good summary.  Precision is a measure of how carefully your descriptive language captures the specific nature of the move in question.  The verb “acknowledges,” for example, is more precise than the all-purpose verb “writes.” (“Writes” can describe virtually every move the author makes, while “acknowledges” describes a specific type of move.)  Accuracy measures how closely your description corresponds to what the author is actually doing.  An accurate summary is a correct description of what the author does.  Accuracy, then, is not the same as precision:  “Acknowledges” may be a little more precise than the verb “claims” … but if the author is, in fact, making a claim, then the word “acknowledges” would be an inaccurate description of what the author is actually doing.       5)   Use objective language:  A summary should aim to give an objective account of what an author does in the text.  A summary is no place for expressing your agreement or disagreement with the author, or for making evaluative comments of any kind.  (Here are examples of the kind of non-objective language that we want to avoid: “I agree with the author that…”, “I can certainly relate to what the author is saying…”, “The author makes several good points…”, “The author persuasively argues that…”).      6)  Describe only what you see going on in the text:  Do not “psychologize” in your summary.  All we have is the text in front of us.  We can only guess at what the author really “thinks” or “feels” or “means to say” … and you should not be making those guesses in a summary.  Your job in a summary is to describe what the author’s language is doing – the moves that you see being made on the page.  In many ways, the language of your summary should resemble the language of objective news reporting in journalism. (The big difference is that you are describing what happens in a text, not what happens in the real world..).     7)  Be sure to use the correct tense in your summarizing verbs (and be consistent):  A summary should always be written in the abstract, “tense-less” present tense that we generally use to describe moves within a structure or a sequence of steps: “The author points out…” is an example of the correct tense for a summary.   (Here are examples of incorrect verb tenses: “The author pointed out…”, “The author is pointing out…”).         8)  Include both paraphrase and quotation in your summary:  A summary should usually consist of paraphrase along with some selective quotation (although direct quotes should make up less than 50% of the total text of your summary).  You are free to quote however much, or however little, you decide is necessary.  As a general rule, you should try to paraphrase whenever possible, and switch to quotation only when the author’s specific choice of language seems significant.  When you do decide to quote from the original language of the text, then quote only as much as necessary.  Do not quote entire sentences as stand-alone units within your summary … instead, combine quoted material with some paraphrase (even if it’s only a brief descriptive lead-in, like “the author claims that…”).         Keep in mind that one goal when writing a summary is to integrate paraphrase and quotation as smoothly as possible.  Each combination of paraphrase/quotation should read as a grammatically complete sentence.  (And don’t forget to convert the concepts and claims you describe into the grammatical form of “that” and “what” clauses…)   The smooth integration of these elements is a skill you will develop with practice; for this assignment, just follow the guidelines here as closely as possible.