📖 Text Shortener Guide
Summarizing is an essential part of academic writing. It shows your ability to separate and present the main findings, plot elements, thoughts, etc. A good summary lets another person easily understand it without reading the original text.
Our free text shortener presents key takeaways of a text using AI technologies. To use it, you need to copy and paste the original text and choose the length of the expected summary. This is how you create a resume with zero stress in a couple of clicks.
In this article, we describe our tool and explain how to write top-scoring summaries.
Let’s go!
📜 When to Use Text Shortener Tool
- When you need to write a concluding paragraph. It can be an essay, research paper, lab report, or other academic text. Paste your body paragraphs into the box to create a summary for your concluding part.
- When you need to shorten your essay. Use this tool if you exceed the word limit in your essay or a particular paragraph. It also works as a sentence shortener.
- When you need to read an extensive article. You will do it faster as summarizing tool makes the text shorter, preserving the main information. It is helpful when you need to read many articles and highlight the key points.
- When you need to shorten other researchers’ passages. Including lengthy quotes in your paper is not the best decision. Instead, you can use our tool to make them shorter without changing their sense.
- When you need to take notes. Create an overview of the studying materials with our online shortener. It is a fast and easy way to make notes without writing or typing them manually.
- When you need to refresh your knowledge. Instead of reading a full text or book, just use a summary generator. After a quick revision of the content, you can save and use these extracts later.
🎉 Shorten Sentence Generator Benefits
Below you will find reasons why students love our shortening tool.
✒️ How to Write an Outstanding Summary
If you want to write a summary yourself, this passage is for you. Follow these guidelines to shorten texts better and faster.
- Find only one core thought – this is the basis of the text. Then look for supporting points that revolve around this idea. At this stage, you can list the essential ideas in the text.
- Don’t use judgmental and emotional vocabulary while writing. Your goal is to be as objective as possible. You can also rewrite the informal style to formal. Remember that summarizing is not the same as paraphrasing.
- Keep your summary brief: it shouldn’t be longer than 15% of the initial text. But we still recommend using synonyms and synonymic expressions not to repeat the original passage. Don’t forget to reference the works you have included.
- Reread your summary. Make sure that its writing style corresponds with the rest of your work.
- Add transition words if you notice that there is no flow. Ask yourself: can a person understand the core meaning of your text just after reading the summary?
If yes, congratulations! You have just created a good summary. If not, find the details that you have missed. It can be a logical sequence, a particular argument, event, or evidence. Rewrite your summary till it fully represents the original text.
✍️ Text Shortening Examples
Now let’s take a look at two summary examples.
🎁 Bonus Tips for Students
- Make sure you know what kind of summary you need. For example, an executive summary has particular guidelines and writing formulas.
- Avoid complex terminology and long sentences. Your summary should be independent and straightforward. Imagine that a person unfamiliar with the topic needs to understand the text.
- To shorten a long text, make a one-sentence summary for each paragraph. It will help you control the size of the summary. It also will be easier to navigate the text if you decide to rewrite or adjust your summary.
❓ FAQ
What does summarize mean?
Summarizing means shortening a larger text without changing its meaning. You can usually see summaries at the end of essays and other academic papers. While shortening a text, you need to cover only the essential details mentioned in the text. In most summaries, you shouldn’t include your opinion on the matter and have to be objective.
How to summarize a story?
You need to retell a story briefly. Imagine that you have read a book and want to describe it to your friend. Highlight the main plot elements and characters that are crucial to the story. Omit the parts that are not essential for a person who wants to understand the plot.
How to summarize a quote?
Read the passage and find its key message. Briefly describe this thought in your own words. Make sure that the summarized piece fits your paper’s tone. If you leave more than three words unchanged, put them in quotation marks. Don’t forget to give credit to the author.
Note: short, clearly expressed quotes do not need shortening.