3.3.1.5. Maintain Objectivity

A summary should reflect the author's message, not your personal opinions or interpretations. Stick strictly to the information presented in the original text.

When writing a summary, it's essential to convey what the original author intended without inserting your personal beliefs or thoughts. This means focusing solely on the author's message and avoiding any subjective opinions. Objectivity ensures that the summary will be an accurate representation of the original material, maintaining the integrity of the author's ideas.

Imagine a movie reviewer who tells you about a film. If they only share their feelings about the movie—like how it made them cry or laugh—you're not getting a clear picture of the movie's plot, themes, or key messages. Instead, an objective review would summarize the story, the main characters, and the primary conflicts without adding personal opinions, giving you a purely factual basis to decide whether to watch the film.

When summarizing: 1. Be Concise: Aim for a significant reduction in length (e.g., 1/3 or 1/4 the length of the original, depending on instructions). 2. Maintain Cohesion and Coherence: The summary should flow smoothly and logically, with clear transitions between ideas. It should read as a unified piece of writing, not just a list of extracted points.

To maintain objectivity in your summary, focus on being concise and coherent. This means stripping away unnecessary words and details to present the core ideas clearly. Reducing the length significantly helps highlight what’s important and prevents the inclusion of your thoughts. Furthermore, transitioning smoothly between different points ensures the summary reads well and feels connected, rather than disjointed and categorical.

Think about writing a simple guide for how to bake a cake. Instead of listing every possible ingredient and baking method (which could lead you off-track with personal baking preferences), your focus should be on the basic ingredients and steps that everyone agrees make a cake. Presenting them clearly, in a logical order, allows anyone reading your guide to follow along easily, just like a well-crafted summary should guide the reader through the author's original points.

After writing, compare your summary to the original text. Does it accurately reflect the main points? Is anything important missing? Is it free of your own opinions? Is it grammatically correct and clear? Ensure it stands alone and makes sense to someone who hasn't read the original.

After completing your summary, it’s crucial to revisit the original text and check for accuracy. This involves verifying if you've captured all the essential points and whether your summary conveys the same meaning without your personal spin. Also, grammatical correctness is vital, as clarity ensures that your summary can be understood by someone unfamiliar with the original work. The aim is to produce a summary that doesn’t rely on the readers knowing the original text.

Consider writing a news report about a community event. After you’ve written your report outlining the event's details, you’d want to read it over to ensure you didn't accidentally include your opinions about the event being 'amazing' or 'boring'. Instead, your focus should be on stating when and where the event happened, who attended, and what occurred, so that even someone who wasn't there can understand the whole picture from just your report.

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