Writing with Style Writing and Style Manual Poway Unified School District

Writing with Style Writing and Style Manual
Poway Unified School District

Specific Forms of Writing

Summary | Paraphrase | Report | Personal writing

Summary

A summary takes a lot of information and condenses it down to the most important points. Summaries are always written in the expository mode because they contain only factual information from the original source, without your own opinion or evaluation. Summaries should include only the main ideas from the original source and should be written in your own words. Your summary may include brief direct quotations of key ideas that you cannot paraphrase.

Typically your summary will follow the organization of the original.

When writing a summary, make a brief outline of the main ideas first. Use titles and section headings as a guide. As a rule, your summary should be no longer than ¼ of the length of the original.

Common uses for summaries are

Summarizing readings or lectures as a study guide
Summarizing new material you have learned to check your understanding
Summarizing documents or research to report findings to another person

One special type of summary is an abstract. An abstract is a short summary of a longer article or report. Abstracts are helpful for readers who need to determine whether a long article would contain useful information.

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Paraphrase

A paraphrase is like a summary in that you take information from another source and put it into your own words. However, one generally uses a paraphrase to reword more detailed and specific information (such as a single passage from a book) while a summary is used to condense a number of longer passages into briefer form. When writing a paraphrase, it is important to completely reword the original passage. You may NOT simply substitute synonyms for key words from the original source.

See the sections on Paraphrasing and Plagiarism for more information.

Summarize, Don't Plagiarize

When writing summaries and paraphrases, read through the material to make sure you understand it. Then, write your summary or paraphrase without looking at the original source. When you finish, check your version against the original and cite the source.

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Report

The purpose of a report is to convey new, interesting, or important information to your audience. A report is also written in the expository mode. Reports are generally factual and include information that was gathered through observation or research. News writing is essentially report writing (hence the term “reporter”).

Common types of reports include:

Lab reports
Book reports
Research reports
Interview reports
News reports

When writing a report, maintain objectivity by avoiding personal opinion or evaluation of the material you are presenting. After collecting your information, arrange and present your ideas in an order that best suits the purpose and subject of the report. See the section Patterns of Organization for ideas.

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Personal Writing

Personal writing involves writing about yourself, your experiences, and your opinions. Personal writing may be for you alone (such as a journal or diary), or it may be directed at a wider audience (such as in a personal essay). However, the purpose of all personal writing is to gain a greater understanding of ourselves through writing about our lives and experiences. Personal writing is informal and may use a more casual tone. Personal writing often combines the narrative, descriptive, and persuasive modes.

Common types of personal writing are

Journals or diaries
Narrative essays about personal experiences
Reflective essays about your ideas or beliefs
Personal statements
Autobiographies and memoirs
Poetry
Responses to literature
Learning logs

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