How to Write an Objective Summary: A Step-by-Step Guide
Writing an objective summary is not always easy. You must go to the core of the work of another person without allowing your own mind to intervene. We have experience that you come to an instance when you are forced to look at a piece of writing and find out how to reduce its contents to a few good paragraphs on a couple of pages.
We have taught students and professionals how to do this skill over the years, and we discovered that the problem of most humans is the same – they are unable to remain completely impartial and write an interesting text at the same time.
A summary is an objective chance when you prove that you not only read but you comprehended what you read. It is not about agreeing and disagreeing but about becoming one of the good translators who would be able to turn complex concepts into fair and understandable ones. Consider that you are a news journalist covering a news story. You are brought in to provide information, not to convince people.
Whether you are writing a school paper, a business report, or some fiction, the rules are the same. You will have to find the most significant points, be neutral, and give information that satisfies your reader. We shall demonstrate to you precisely how to construct summaries that are not only complete but also super fair, step by step.
Once you go through this guide, you should be able to read any piece of literature with certainty. You will no longer have to guess whether you have been objective or have covered the most crucial sections anymore. Now, let us learn the step-by-step process that would transform how you prepare objective summaries.
What is an Objective Summary?
An objective summary is merely a dispassionate rewording of another person in their own idea, without giving your personal thoughts, opinion, and/or interpretation. You can almost consider it like a mirror to the original text: you are trying to see what is there rather than to re-sculpture it.
Very frequently, objective summaries are interchanged with normal summaries or reviews. The difference is this: whereas an ordinary summary may contain such phrases as "the author brilliantly argues" or "this weak point suggests," an objective summary will adhere only to "the author states" or "research indicates."
The fundamental rule is not so hard: you are a messenger, not a judge. What you are supposed to do is to present the original argument, evidence, and conclusions of the author, keeping these things free of personal opinions of your perceptions. It is like being a talented court reporter who records all the important details without the comments.
Summaries are objective; they play a significant role in the academic sphere and at work. They show that you can learn challenging content and then summarize it to other people. By doing it excellently, a person should be in a position to read your summary and get the gist of the actual work without having to consult the whole piece.
And the thing is, the beauty of mastering this skill comes with its versatility. These are the same in a scientific study, a commercial proposal, or a literary analysis when you need to summarize it. You take out the main idea, preserve the message the author wanted to put out there, and re-draft it in a refined and palatable form.
Above all, a good objective summary is mindful of both the source author and your reader. You are building a bridge to confusing original work, and a person who has to read it fast and understand it correctly.
Step-by-Step Process for Writing an Objective Summary
To make an objective summary that can successfully be used, one has to master six basic rules. We have gone through thousands of summaries in both academic and professional contexts, and these elements always act as the difference between an exceptional and a good effort.
Consider these as your quality checklist. They all add to each other, and the combination of them will help you make sure that your summary will be the most useful to your reader as well as relevant to the source material.
Brief and Focused
A good summary goes to the bottom line. What we are talking about is less than one-tenth the page length of the original content, yet all the main information is retained with none of it containing unwanted padding.
You want to mention the most important facts that directly argue the main thesis. Each sentence has to pay its dues to contribute to making the reader understand the central point. Anything that does not add to the main message is not to be included in your summary.
It is an art to be brief and not too shallow. You would like to compress sophisticated arguments into manageable chunks without draining their intellectual value. This implies that you should learn to frame your words in the best possible way and in a sentence structure.
Impartial and Balanced Perspective
A good objective summary will lack any personal views and subjective interpretations. You are introducing the author's thoughts as he thought, without opinion or selection.
This implies that one should not use subjective terms such as brilliantly argues or fails to consider. On the contrary, you will employ neutral expressions like the author says or the research shows. Your summary must be neutral to an extent that a reader cannot find out your personal attitude on the subject.
You can easily encounter how writers turn out to fight against such controversial issues, and we should always bear in mind that our task is to put up the original text in the most proper way, whether we agree with it or not. The summary is not about what you have to think about what the author said; it is all about what the author said.
Factually Correct
Precision is the spine of every reasonable survey. All the statements, figures, and other pieces of information should be in perfect unison with the source material. A single unrepresentative fact can compromise the whole of your summary.
This implies that you should pay close attention to what you are reading. Learn to take down notes on definite data figures, quotations, and conclusions. When composing the summary, cross-check it against the original text to make it precise.
Factual accuracy also entails not taking out the intended meaning of the author. Occasionally, putting your own words in your own words may also cause a message change, so it is always important to check that what you say is what the original author meant.
Well-Organized and Understandable
Your conclusion must be in a logical sequence of major points. The reader should be able to read and fall in line with your thought, even as you work with dense source material.
Begin with the main thesis and give supporting information according to its importance. Make smooth jumps between ideas and present information in a logical manner, so that a person who reads it and learns something new can understand it.
The structure is to be similar to the original text, where workable, and do not be scared to rearrange the structure to be clear. This feature of the best summaries sometimes makes them display information in a more rational order than even the material being summarized.
Comprehensive Coverage
On the one hand, you need to be brief; on the other hand, however, your summary should not miss any important aspects of the source. It implies adding major topics, important points, and other valuable information to back the major arguments by the author.
Covering all the details does not mean covering everything just because it is a minor detail. Rather, one should concentrate on the concepts that directly promote the main idea of the author. Ask yourself: What does a person have to know to make the full argument of such an author?
The most important thing in this case is balance. You would like to create a brief overview that will provide an idea about all the big aspects, but will not be too detailed. Consider it as drawing a map that tells about all the significant spots instead of writing about every pavement corner.
Maintains Original Intent
The last part will make your summary keep its original tone and purpose of the author. Aim at summarizing the original author in your own way by keeping in mind that our source material should be either convincing, informative, or analytical.
This implies that they should not be less or more certain or uncertain of whatever the author said. In case they provided impressionistic results, do not make them sound absolute. In the event they were forceful in putting forward an opinion, do not kill their arguments completely.
Your summary must resemble a trustworthy one of the original-transcribed in as few words as you can make it, but nevertheless, still sounding a recognizable same. Once properly done, the author of the material would be aware of their work in your summarized presentation.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Writing an Objective Summary
The 1st step towards writing an objective summary is getting a clear roadmap. It is a five-step criterion that we have perfected over the years when dealing with students and professionals, and we can always give you a clear and impartial outcome.
One step leads to another, forming a systematic process that clears the guesswork. This process guarantees that neither in the case of working with academic papers, and with business reports or any other complicated text, your summary will leave the existence of this thought.
Step 1: Read and Understand the Text
Initially, your first reading must be that of understanding. Do not bother making notes or note taking or finding out what the essential points are, at this stage, you just have to get the idea of what the author is literally saying.
Go through the whole work cover to cover. This will provide you with the entire picture, and you will be able to see how individual arguments will contribute to the larger one. When people read, most of them attempt to read and summarize, and this is the place where most of them fail to capture the essential connections.
The introduction and conclusion are the most important parts that usually present the main idea and the most important findings. Pay attention to the way in which the author presents his/her argument and to the evidence which he/she provides to authorize the given claims.
In the first reading, avoid the temptation to pass judgments on whatever you are reading. You have to learn without understanding; you are aiming at direct knowledge, that is, learning the original text in the way the author intended a meaning to be taken.
Step 2: Identify and Extract the Main Ideas
Here is where the sleuthing is to take place. Read the text once more with an active search for the main thesis and the key points provided by this thesis.
Look at the beginning of paragraphs, where you can find topic sentences, and they usually hint at something important. It is also worth paying attention to transitional words such as however, therefore, in conclusion, etc., and they tend to indicate important statements or changes in the argument.
Write down or plan a list of the major themes and details in support. Say and write in your own shorthand until you have caught the main ideas; do not bother at present about making sentences. This will make you view the bones of the text before commencing your summary.
Don't forget to separate big arguments and small examples that support them. You will concentrate on the details that prove the main idea, and you will not mention interesting yet extraneous information.
Step 3: Write the Summary in Your Own Words
It is at this point that your summary will appear. Based on your outline, start writing a goal summary wherein you translate what the author is talking about in your own words.
Begin by identifying the main idea or key point of the author: what is it that he is arguing? And finally introduce the backing information in logical sequence, keeping the same flow as the very first text when feasible.
You should not use wording exactly from the source. Rather, paraphrase concepts; in your own words, however, keeping their original meaning. This shows that you have got it and you can be able to be objective.
Make your words neutral and factual. Don't use subjective expressions such as in the author argues, in the research shows or in the study concludes as they may tend to introduce your own stand.
Step 4: Keep It Short and Precise
It is time to do some fat trimming. Your summary must be considerably shorter than the original one, without forgetting any important points.
Take out extraneous information that has no direct bearing on the point. Get rid of unnecessary explanations and merge similar items. Each sentence must have a definite purpose of making readers comprehend the original source.
Your goal should be maybe a quarter, maybe one-third as long as the original text. These things make you concentrate on what really matters and bring complex arguments to their basics.
Keep sentences brief; shorter is better. There is no need to say, the author makes the point, just write, the author states. This makes your summary short and to the point.
Step 5: Review and Edit for Accuracy
The last of the four steps is your quality control. Read your summary and the original text so that you can be sure you have not missed any important points.
It is always a good idea to check whether you have not inserted some personal opinions or interpretations implicitly. It is absolutely important that your summary has no personal inclination, i.e., a reader is not able to get any less understanding than with the original work.
Make sure that facts, statistics, and conclusions are in sync with the source material. Even minor errors have the ability to compromise your credibility and confuse the readers.
Lastly, make sure that your summary is smooth and can make sense to a person who has not read the original work. It is to be a self-contained piece of writing that would give a brief idea of the main points of the source material.
Types of Content That Require Objective Summaries
Even the most practiced writers trap themselves into the God-like common pitfalls of writing objective summaries. We found the most common traps that may turn a good summary into a biased, inaccurate, or rather useless one.
Learning about these errors in advance will spare you a lot of revision time later. But most of all, it is so much easier to dodge subjective words and be neutral when you are absolutely clear about what you should be careful about.
So, what are the exact mistakes that can fumble your objective summary? How then can you avoid them altogether?
Including Personal Opinions and Bias
The most common error that any writer commits is allowing his/her thoughts to creep into the summary. We also do this all the time. It was clearly stated that the author illustrates brilliantly, or this rather fallacious argument is indicative that you have moved into the subjective domain.
Your paraphrase should have no personal impressions or judgmental terms. Rather than include the words, the study is indubitably certain, use phrases that have no appeal to the author, using neutral phrases such as the study concludes, or the research indicates. This leaves your summary unbiased, and the reader makes their own judgment.
Be wary of loaded adjectives and adverbs that betray your position. Such words as unfortunately, clearly or obviously should never take place in an objective summary. It is important to note that these are opinion markers that can creep in unconsciously; thus, pay particular attention to them when reading your draft.
Adding Information Not in the Original Text
The other source of error is when one adds external information or supposition to what one is reading. There should be no context, background information, or switch-over to other works, only the original source when summarizing.
This involves the avoidance of the temptation to explain what the author assumes the reader knows. In case the original source fails to define a technical term, do not include it in your summary either. It is your task to make what is there concise, not to add something more or make something clearer than it was stated by the author.
In other cases, writers in unwanted errors involving some of the material they have in their general knowledge and think they are assisting the reader to understand what the author is stating. This, however, alters the summary to an objectification of something other than the actual picture of the real thing.
Focusing on Minor Details Instead of Main Points
Sure enough, to avow, most authors lose track of the thesis and find themselves trapped in some exciting examples or some colorful anecdotes. In your summary, the big picture and key points should be given precedence over the fanciful, undeclared informational stuff.
Ask yourself to what extent this detail bears directly on the main argument given by the author? Otherwise, it is not likely to be in your summary. The best summaries do not try to translate all supporting evidence, but the skeleton of the argument.
We commonly get summaries that sound more like a compilation of unrelated data instead of a comprehensible exposition of the points of author. This occurs when authors do not draw lines between fundamental arguments and example cases.
Making the Summary Too Long or Too Short
To reach a suitable length, a trade of between offering details and being concise must be struck. An overly long summary will be counterproductive to the point of condensing, while an overly short summary will omit critical details.
Typically, an approximate figure should be anywhere around 25-30 percent of the original length. This provides you with ample room to discuss all important principal themes and at the same time puts you under pressure to concentrate on what is really important. To summarize, your summary must not be as long as the original is, but it should be comprehensive.
It is important to remember that various audiences may require varying levels of detail. An overview that can be read by a recruiter skimming through resumes does not need to be as in-depth as the one given in an academic context. Change your length at the same time and remain objective.
Using Direct Quotes Instead of Paraphrasing
Short quotations here and there are occasions, but using the use of direct quotations extensively indicates a lack of understanding. Your summary needs to show that you have read it and are in a position to state whether it has had any effects on your own, upstanding way.
Making a paraphrase indicates that you are familiar with the material, as you are able to combine your own words and still retain the information. This is particularly relevant where you are required to reduce sophisticated arguments to easy language.
When using quotes, they shouldn't be given lightly, but only when necessary in identifying the voice of the author or a point so significant. The fact is that most summaries will be more successful in case you restructure the contents in your own words instead of taping together quotations.
Ignoring the Original Structure and Flow
In your summary, you must keep the original spirit and line of reasoning of the writing you get. Random shuffling of arguments or points by jumping around is detrimental and confuses the readers, hence not representing the argument of author.
Although you do not have to trace all the transitions in the original text, the flow of it should make sense. Arrange current thoughts in such a way that readers can able to follow the thinking process of the author.
Note the way the author makes his or her case. When they provide background information and then offer their main argument, your summary should tend to go in that direction too, but even where you condense each part considerably.
Objective Summary Example: What Works and What Doesn't
Summary of objectives play essential roles in numerous aspects and situations. Knowing how and when such neutral fact-based summaries are necessary will give you a clear idea about why they are considered so important both in professional and academic life.
We have cooperated with specialists in different fields, and the necessity to have good and objective summaries seems to appear in unexpected areas. Whether it is in board rooms or classrooms, the distillation of information without bias is a good skill.
Where could we see that objective summaries are not only useful but also necessary? Let us work out the real areas of the content where objective elaboration is not optional.
Academic Papers and Research Studies
Literature review, research proposal, and scholarly articles require objective reviews as written in academic writing. When conducting a review of past research, you should not give your own judgment, thoughts, and conclusions about a particular study; you have to state the results of each research study without your own comments.
Summaries of research enable other scholars to easily learn the specifics of a study, its findings, and its inferences of the research without going through the whole paper. Any information that you want to convey in the summary should not be subjective concerning the strengths or limitations of the study, but focus more on capturing the main thesis, research methodology, and main findings of the study.
The objective summaries are of great importance to the graduate students who do the literature reviews. They are summaries that will be building blocks to bigger research, and therefore, accuracy and neutrality are out of the picture. The authors concentrate the summary on the findings and conclusions made by the researchers.
Business Reports and Proposals
Executives in corporate settings want brief accounts of long reports, market studies, and strategic plans. A business plan reader who will go through 30-40 different business plans does not have the time to read and find out the essence of every plan.
Such summaries assist the decision-makers in understanding critical material in them without getting engrossed in the comprehensive appendices and supplementary data. Your summary is meant to provide a few points concerning market opportunities, financial projections, and strategic recommendations, not to enter too much detail.
Major decisions are usually made by referring to business summaries, and it is therefore important to be objective. The stakeholders require objective truth to make a decision rather than generalizations based on the interest or doubts of the author towards a specific practice.
Legal Documents and Case Studies
Lawyers are continuously dealing with summarized reports of cases, laws, and court rulings, which are objective in nature. Such summaries enable lawyers to grasp the precedents and the background of the laws in the shortest time possible without having to read the full case files.
Legal summaries have to be accurate and devoid of subjective opinions. An erroneous detail takes some considerations, and therefore, such summaries must be handled with very high standards of care in regard to accuracy and fairness.
Particularly, case briefs have a standard format that introduces facts, issues, holdings, and the reasoning in a structured way that has no bias. The ability to write objective summaries is a baseline skill that law students are taught.
News Articles and Media Content
Media specialists and journalists frequently require objective views of the press releases, speeches, and events. Such are used to allow editors the insight to choose which stories to go behind and act as a background for reporters who follow other events taking place.
News synopses are not allowed to be biased, editorial, or based on predilection. The trial should offer who, what, when, where, and why details without using subjective words that could change the opinion of people.
Media monitoring services offer summaries that help an organization to know how they are being depicted on various platforms and whether they are being depicted fairly through objective summaries. Such summaries do not imply a personal bias toward main themes and key details.
Books and Literature
Objective summaries of books, plays, and other literary works are unique to students, teaching, and literary professionals who routinely prepare objective summaries. The summaries give the readers the idea of the plot, themes, and character development without their own interpretations.
The main difference between literary summaries and analysis is that they are on a tightrope between bringing out main themes and not doing analysis. Your conclusion must give the main idea and its key events, but allow the readers to produce their own ideas of the meaning or quality of the work.
Objective summaries are usually employed by the teachers when they need to introduce children to difficult texts or remind them of what they have read before. These summaries are bare rather than literary analysis.
Technical Documentation and Manuals
On a regular basis, technical writers are making objective summaries of complicated processes, new arrivals of software, and systems specifications. The summaries provide users with the advantage of getting a quick impression of new features or changes without having to read all the details in the documentation.
Technical summaries should not just be correct in their facts, but also attend to key points that have an influence on user experiences. They ought to organize the information in a clear way that can enable readers to easily see what has been changed and how it is going to affect their work.
Release notes: Short descriptions such as new features, bug reports, and system requirements are frequently written like objective descriptions in software release notes. These summaries assist the users and the administrators in knowing updates without getting too many details about the technical implementation.
Scientific Articles and Studies
Objective summaries enable scientists and researchers to keep track of the changes taking place in their areas and they write scientific articles. Abstract parts are brief statements that help an investigator uses to determine the need to read complete articles.
Scientific summaries should not be biased or allow interpretation of any kind other than methodology, results, and conclusions as they were in the original text. The summary ought to incorporate the scope of the research as well as limitations made in the original study, besides showing important results.
Objective summaries of ongoing projects are usually required in research institutions in the application of funding and reporting of progress of the projects. Through these summaries, the reviewers are able to evaluate research objectives and findings without accompanying thoughts regarding the gravity of the work or consequences.
Conclusion
It is far easier to learn to write objective summaries when you have an example of written summaries of good and bad quality in your field of view. We did make two copies of the same summary to understand, exactly, what the difference is between professional work and amateur efforts.
These two examples will demonstrate how a few word choices can keep your summary neutral or add unwanted bias to it. The more you read through what works and fail to do, the more you will learn to recognize them in your own.
Sample Text for Summary Practice
"Climate change is one of the most demanding issues of the day. Recent research by the International Climate Research Institute indicates that the temperature on Earth has increased by 1.2 degrees Celsius since before industrialization. This rise has caused the occurrence of more extreme weather scenarios, such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods, that have devastated millions of people in the world. The study reveals that anthropogenic activities, especially the consumption of fossil fuels, are the main causes of such developments. Scientists have cautioned that unless the effort to curb global warming through cutting down greenhouse gas emissions is done urgently, there are chances that irreversible damage to the planet may be experienced in the next decade. But the paper also notes encouraging signs in renewable energy science and that concerted international action still may limit the most disastrous consequences of climate change."
What Doesn't Work: A Biased Summary
"The most important crisis that the world is going through now is obviously climate change. According to new terrifying research studies conducted by the International Climate Research Center, the temperatures of the Earth have risen by up to 1.2 degrees since pre-industrial times. Such a steep rise has led to devastating life-threatening extreme weather conditions, such as devastating hurricanes, catastrophic floods, damaging droughts, and deadly floods that over the years have proven to affect millions of innocent people around the world. The study reveals clearly that any irresponsible act of burning fossil fuels is indeed the prime cause of these drastic changes, and that the cause is in the form of human action. The scientists sound the evocative call to alarm that in ten years' time our planet will be destroyed completely unless something is done to curb the emission of greenhouse gases asap. Great news is that the study also indicates some promising to occur trends regarding renewable energy technology, and reckons that there still can be some hope and solution in terms of global climate crisis catastrophes."
Problems with This Biased Version
This overview has a drawback in that it is full of individual beliefs and biased words. The use of such words as obviously, alarming, skyrocketed, and catastrophic shows the emotional side of the writer instead of giving the facts as they are.
The language is dramatic and judgmental as opposed to neutral language. Basing moral judgments on such phrases as innocent people and reckless burning, one fails to understand that this kind of judgment is absent in the very text.
Subjective Language Warning Signs
Evaluative adjectives, as “alarming”, “devastating”, and “catastrophic”, point out to the reader that you are no longer just reporting the facts. These are emotional words, and they are absent in cold scholarly compositions.
Opinion markers like “obviously”, “clearly”, and “definitely” indicate that the author is passing judgment and not reporting about something. These certitude statements should never be contained in an objective synthesis.
Emotional Impact vs. Factual Reporting
The biased form makes use of word choices to increase emotional emphasis. Rather than saying that temperatures are increasing, it says that they have skyrocketed. Such a language manipulation alters the perception of the original text of the reader.
Evaluations such as characterization of the use of fossil fuel as reckless are an overstatement of what was said in the source material. When writing a summary, it should not be based on your personality and thoughts on the argument, but it should be similar to the tone of the main writer.
Why Personal Opinions Damage Objectivity
Inserting your own opinions in your summary is basically repackaging the work of an author in your own way. This kills the whole case of forming an objective summary.
Summaries are important to the readers to interpret the material used in the source. When you are falsifying the original text with your preconceptions, you are against not only the author but also the reader.
Maintaining Professional Standards
Academic writing summaries (in the business setting) cannot involve personal opinions. A recruiter going through the research summaries does not need to know how the writer feels about it; they would look for facts.
Summary sections in a resume with subjective terms tend to look unprofessional and may damage your reputation with prospective employers.
Building Trust Through Neutrality
When the summary that you come up with is objective, the reader will believe you projected an accurate picture of the source material. Such trust is needed when communicating in a professional and academic environment.
Objective summarizing enables readers to construct their opinion based on the good information instead of the distorted version on the part of your interpretation.
What Works: An Objective Summary
"Studies conducted at the International Climate Research Institute indicate that the world temperature has been rising since pre-industrial times during a rising of 1.2 degrees Celsius. The document shows that this increased temperature has led to increased instances of extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods, which have affected millions of people all over the world. The study posits that human endeavors, especially the burning of fossil fuels to be the main cause of such variations in temperature. According to the scientists, the Earth is facing the possibility of irreversible harm in the next 10 years unless it takes advantage of the Emergency now to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. The research also remarks on the progress of renewable energy technology and recommends that the unity of many efforts in the mitigation of severe climate effects may help to a great extent."
Why This Version Succeeds
The given summary is effective as it neither reflects the personal opinion of the author nor uses any evaluative terms. It employs the objective reporting language, such as according to research, according to the study, and the scientists say.
The short version has retained all of the important insights of the original work and it is objective of the findings. It shows the balance of the original writer when it comes to the lay out of problems and solution.
Neutral Language Techniques
The use of attributive statements such as the study reveals and researchers discovered leaves the attention on the original authority and not on your meaning. This tool assists you in creating a factual summary that would be credible.
Factual reporting simply uses verifiable information without any emotional and evaluative remarks. The conclusion and data are not biased in the summary.
Effective Attribution Methods
The identification of sources is seen regularly in a good summary. Each key statement is referenced to the research, and it is obvious that these are the findings of the authors, not the laws of the world.
The correct citation skills also assist the reader to know the origin of information, but still leave the summary objective. This will create credibility and prove factual correctness.
Balanced Perspective Approach
The good summary also has the same proportional importance as the original text does. It is neither overselling nor over-focusing on problems and solutions, but both sides represent the source material desired. The use of a consistent tone throughout the summary will enable readers to know what the author really implied instead of how important he or you thinks it should be.
Wide-Ranging Unbiased Coverage
The most significant information of the original text is presented in relevant quantify. The summary does not increase some aspects depending on the interests or interests of the writer. Important points are equally covered, and the readers do not have to think that a certain issue is the argument of writer due to personal emotional influence.
Factual Standards of Accuracy
All the statistics, postulates, and conclusions in the summary of effectiveness are identical to those in the text. This accuracy is plain in objective summaries, which is not negotiable. Accuracy in reporting implies that there should be no approximations and the true meaning of the author should not be altered. Your overview must be precise to an extent such that the original writer would identify his/her work.
Key Differences Analysis
Language options form the most apparent difference between a successful and unsuccessful summary. In the good one, neutral language of reporting is used, although the poor one has used emotions and evaluative language.
There is also a great difference in attribution methods. The productive summary never leaves the source of a claim a mystery, and the flawed ones discussed only display views as inherited facts.
Tone and Objectivity Comparison
The tone is the distinguishing feature between a professional summary and someone who tries to summarize. The effective version uses controlled language all through, and on the other han,d the biased summary alternates between panic and optimism.
The good summary is emotionally neutral, and the readers can objectively process the information, but the problematic one exploits the emotional feeling by playing with words.
Impact on Reader Understanding
An objective summary made clearly will facilitate the readers to have the right understanding of the original text. The polarized version misleads with emotionally-based wording and self-interpreting powers.
The trust that readers develop when they are summarizing information is when these summaries contain reliable, unbiased information. One-sided summaries may negatively impact your credibility and confuse your audience.
Professional Standards Comparison
The quality of writing that meets the standards of academic communication also demands neutrality, which is achieved in the effective summary. The racist interpretation would be intolerable in either work workplace or an educational setting.
Objectivity is also required in the field of business communication. The use of subjective language in a resume summary or a project report will make a candidate look unprofessional, and this can cost him or her a career.
Practical Application Tips
As you compose the summary, read one sentence, and here are the questions to ask yourself: "Would this sentence hold opinion-wise to a person who does not share the same opinion or view on this subject?" In case the answer is negative, then you have probably added personal opinions.
Be especially attentive to adjectives and adverbs. Terms such as the following: important, significant, unfortunately, or clearly are always a warning that you have crossed the line into interpretation.
Self-Assessment Questions for Objectivity
It is easy to detect bias when you have certain questions to act as a guide during your review. You should put a question to yourself whether your summary would appear to the person who does not agree with the issue.
Checking of neutrality should revolve around the use of language, attribution, and general tone. Your conclusion must be neutral to an extent where neither of the readers is able to conclude upon your own position.
Language Monitoring Strategies
The use of words has a great influence on objectivity. Make a mental list of warning words that will generally indicate the use of subjective language, and consciously try to keep yourself out of them in your summary.
The choice of phrases is also important, along with the choice of words. Select phrases that will make the attribution distant, such that there is a hint between you and the statements you are making.
Revision Techniques for Objectivity
When you revise it several times, you then discover that you are biased, but you are not when you are writing up your draft. Read your summary with a special eye to evaluative words and personal opinions.
Another person reviewing your paper objectively can assist you in uncovering your bias. Request another colleague to single out some language that appears subjective or emotive.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learning the art of objective summarization will reap its reward in any academic and professional life. The strategies discussed here, including the use of neutral language, sticking to key points, among others, provide all that is necessary to come up with brief but factually correct summaries.
And you are steadily aiming not to have personal bias in the reproduction of the original. Be it a resume summary to impress a recruiter or a summary of researched work, it is recommended that you avoid personal views as far as you can so that your work can be accepted as believable and serve your readers well.
The action step becomes unsaid after practice. Pay attention to gain sight of the source material, its main takeaways, and represent information in your own words, being objective. And then you will be in the spot where you can ensure your summaries are at a professional level when you avoid all those pitfalls we have mentioned today.
Value Summaries that reduce complex information into understandable forms are becoming important. Practice these methods from now on, and you will see you have one of the greatest communication tools at your disposal: objective summary writing.
What is an objective summary?
An objective summary is a neutral, fact-based condensation of source material that presents main points without personal opinions or bias. It reflects the original text's key information while remaining objective and free of personal opinions.
How long should an objective summary be?
An effective summary should be about 25-30% of the original text length. This allows you to cover key takeaways and main points while keeping the content concise and focused on essential content without unnecessary details.
What's the difference between a summary and an objective summary?
A regular summary may include personal interpretations and evaluative language, while an objective summary strictly presents information without bias. Objective summaries use neutral attribution phrases and avoid subjective language entirely.
Can I include quotes in an objective summary?
Yes, but use quotes sparingly and only when essential to capture the author's specific voice or crucial point. Most effective summaries rely on paraphrasing to demonstrate understanding while maintaining the summary's flow and concise nature.
How do I avoid personal bias in my summary?
Use neutral attribution phrases like "the author states" or "the research indicates." Avoid evaluative adjectives and subjective language. Focus on presenting facts without your own interpretations or emotional reactions to the material.
What should I do if the original text is confusing?
Summarize only what you clearly understand from the original text. Don't add explanations or interpretations that aren't explicitly stated. If concepts are unclear, write the summary based on what the author actually presented.
How do I identify the main points for my summary?
Look for topic sentences, thesis statements, and conclusions in the source material. Focus on arguments that directly support the central thesis rather than examples or supporting details that illustrate those points.
Should I reorganize information in my objective summary?
Generally, follow the original text structure when possible. You can condense sections, but avoid reorganizing in ways that might change the author's intended emphasis or logical flow of arguments.
What's the biggest mistake when writing objective summaries?
Including personal opinions and subjective language is the most common error. Words like "obviously," "clearly," or "unfortunately" signal that you've moved beyond objective reporting into personal interpretation.
How do I know if my summary is truly objective?
Ask yourself: "Could someone with opposite views on this topic accept my summary as factually accurate?" If yes, you've likely maintained objectivity. Your summary should be so neutral that readers can't detect your personal stance.
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How to Write an Objective Summary: A Step-by-Step Guide
Writing an objective summary is not always easy. You must go to the core of the work of another person without allowing your own mind to intervene. We have experience that you come to an instance when you are forced to look at a piece of writing and find out how to reduce its contents to a few good paragraphs on a couple of pages.
We have taught students and professionals how to do this skill over the years, and we discovered that the problem of most humans is the same – they are unable to remain completely impartial and write an interesting text at the same time.
A summary is an objective chance when you prove that you not only read but you comprehended what you read. It is not about agreeing and disagreeing but about becoming one of the good translators who would be able to turn complex concepts into fair and understandable ones. Consider that you are a news journalist covering a news story. You are brought in to provide information, not to convince people.
Whether you are writing a school paper, a business report, or some fiction, the rules are the same. You will have to find the most significant points, be neutral, and give information that satisfies your reader. We shall demonstrate to you precisely how to construct summaries that are not only complete but also super fair, step by step.
Once you go through this guide, you should be able to read any piece of literature with certainty. You will no longer have to guess whether you have been objective or have covered the most crucial sections anymore. Now, let us learn the step-by-step process that would transform how you prepare objective summaries.
What is an Objective Summary?
An objective summary is merely a dispassionate rewording of another person in their own idea, without giving your personal thoughts, opinion, and/or interpretation. You can almost consider it like a mirror to the original text: you are trying to see what is there rather than to re-sculpture it.
Very frequently, objective summaries are interchanged with normal summaries or reviews. The difference is this: whereas an ordinary summary may contain such phrases as "the author brilliantly argues" or "this weak point suggests," an objective summary will adhere only to "the author states" or "research indicates."
The fundamental rule is not so hard: you are a messenger, not a judge. What you are supposed to do is to present the original argument, evidence, and conclusions of the author, keeping these things free of personal opinions of your perceptions. It is like being a talented court reporter who records all the important details without the comments.
Summaries are objective; they play a significant role in the academic sphere and at work. They show that you can learn challenging content and then summarize it to other people. By doing it excellently, a person should be in a position to read your summary and get the gist of the actual work without having to consult the whole piece.
And the thing is, the beauty of mastering this skill comes with its versatility. These are the same in a scientific study, a commercial proposal, or a literary analysis when you need to summarize it. You take out the main idea, preserve the message the author wanted to put out there, and re-draft it in a refined and palatable form.
Above all, a good objective summary is mindful of both the source author and your reader. You are building a bridge to confusing original work, and a person who has to read it fast and understand it correctly.
Step-by-Step Process for Writing an Objective Summary
To make an objective summary that can successfully be used, one has to master six basic rules. We have gone through thousands of summaries in both academic and professional contexts, and these elements always act as the difference between an exceptional and a good effort.
Consider these as your quality checklist. They all add to each other, and the combination of them will help you make sure that your summary will be the most useful to your reader as well as relevant to the source material.
Brief and Focused
A good summary goes to the bottom line. What we are talking about is less than one-tenth the page length of the original content, yet all the main information is retained with none of it containing unwanted padding.
You want to mention the most important facts that directly argue the main thesis. Each sentence has to pay its dues to contribute to making the reader understand the central point. Anything that does not add to the main message is not to be included in your summary.
It is an art to be brief and not too shallow. You would like to compress sophisticated arguments into manageable chunks without draining their intellectual value. This implies that you should learn to frame your words in the best possible way and in a sentence structure.
Impartial and Balanced Perspective
A good objective summary will lack any personal views and subjective interpretations. You are introducing the author's thoughts as he thought, without opinion or selection.
This implies that one should not use subjective terms such as brilliantly argues or fails to consider. On the contrary, you will employ neutral expressions like the author says or the research shows. Your summary must be neutral to an extent that a reader cannot find out your personal attitude on the subject.
You can easily encounter how writers turn out to fight against such controversial issues, and we should always bear in mind that our task is to put up the original text in the most proper way, whether we agree with it or not. The summary is not about what you have to think about what the author said; it is all about what the author said.
Factually Correct
Precision is the spine of every reasonable survey. All the statements, figures, and other pieces of information should be in perfect unison with the source material. A single unrepresentative fact can compromise the whole of your summary.
This implies that you should pay close attention to what you are reading. Learn to take down notes on definite data figures, quotations, and conclusions. When composing the summary, cross-check it against the original text to make it precise.
Factual accuracy also entails not taking out the intended meaning of the author. Occasionally, putting your own words in your own words may also cause a message change, so it is always important to check that what you say is what the original author meant.
Well-Organized and Understandable
Your conclusion must be in a logical sequence of major points. The reader should be able to read and fall in line with your thought, even as you work with dense source material.
Begin with the main thesis and give supporting information according to its importance. Make smooth jumps between ideas and present information in a logical manner, so that a person who reads it and learns something new can understand it.
The structure is to be similar to the original text, where workable, and do not be scared to rearrange the structure to be clear. This feature of the best summaries sometimes makes them display information in a more rational order than even the material being summarized.
Comprehensive Coverage
On the one hand, you need to be brief; on the other hand, however, your summary should not miss any important aspects of the source. It implies adding major topics, important points, and other valuable information to back the major arguments by the author.
Covering all the details does not mean covering everything just because it is a minor detail. Rather, one should concentrate on the concepts that directly promote the main idea of the author. Ask yourself: What does a person have to know to make the full argument of such an author?
The most important thing in this case is balance. You would like to create a brief overview that will provide an idea about all the big aspects, but will not be too detailed. Consider it as drawing a map that tells about all the significant spots instead of writing about every pavement corner.
Maintains Original Intent
The last part will make your summary keep its original tone and purpose of the author. Aim at summarizing the original author in your own way by keeping in mind that our source material should be either convincing, informative, or analytical.
This implies that they should not be less or more certain or uncertain of whatever the author said. In case they provided impressionistic results, do not make them sound absolute. In the event they were forceful in putting forward an opinion, do not kill their arguments completely.
Your summary must resemble a trustworthy one of the original-transcribed in as few words as you can make it, but nevertheless, still sounding a recognizable same. Once properly done, the author of the material would be aware of their work in your summarized presentation.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Writing an Objective Summary
The 1st step towards writing an objective summary is getting a clear roadmap. It is a five-step criterion that we have perfected over the years when dealing with students and professionals, and we can always give you a clear and impartial outcome.
One step leads to another, forming a systematic process that clears the guesswork. This process guarantees that neither in the case of working with academic papers, and with business reports or any other complicated text, your summary will leave the existence of this thought.
Step 1: Read and Understand the Text
Initially, your first reading must be that of understanding. Do not bother making notes or note taking or finding out what the essential points are, at this stage, you just have to get the idea of what the author is literally saying.
Go through the whole work cover to cover. This will provide you with the entire picture, and you will be able to see how individual arguments will contribute to the larger one. When people read, most of them attempt to read and summarize, and this is the place where most of them fail to capture the essential connections.
The introduction and conclusion are the most important parts that usually present the main idea and the most important findings. Pay attention to the way in which the author presents his/her argument and to the evidence which he/she provides to authorize the given claims.
In the first reading, avoid the temptation to pass judgments on whatever you are reading. You have to learn without understanding; you are aiming at direct knowledge, that is, learning the original text in the way the author intended a meaning to be taken.
Step 2: Identify and Extract the Main Ideas
Here is where the sleuthing is to take place. Read the text once more with an active search for the main thesis and the key points provided by this thesis.
Look at the beginning of paragraphs, where you can find topic sentences, and they usually hint at something important. It is also worth paying attention to transitional words such as however, therefore, in conclusion, etc., and they tend to indicate important statements or changes in the argument.
Write down or plan a list of the major themes and details in support. Say and write in your own shorthand until you have caught the main ideas; do not bother at present about making sentences. This will make you view the bones of the text before commencing your summary.
Don't forget to separate big arguments and small examples that support them. You will concentrate on the details that prove the main idea, and you will not mention interesting yet extraneous information.
Step 3: Write the Summary in Your Own Words
It is at this point that your summary will appear. Based on your outline, start writing a goal summary wherein you translate what the author is talking about in your own words.
Begin by identifying the main idea or key point of the author: what is it that he is arguing? And finally introduce the backing information in logical sequence, keeping the same flow as the very first text when feasible.
You should not use wording exactly from the source. Rather, paraphrase concepts; in your own words, however, keeping their original meaning. This shows that you have got it and you can be able to be objective.
Make your words neutral and factual. Don't use subjective expressions such as in the author argues, in the research shows or in the study concludes as they may tend to introduce your own stand.
Step 4: Keep It Short and Precise
It is time to do some fat trimming. Your summary must be considerably shorter than the original one, without forgetting any important points.
Take out extraneous information that has no direct bearing on the point. Get rid of unnecessary explanations and merge similar items. Each sentence must have a definite purpose of making readers comprehend the original source.
Your goal should be maybe a quarter, maybe one-third as long as the original text. These things make you concentrate on what really matters and bring complex arguments to their basics.
Keep sentences brief; shorter is better. There is no need to say, the author makes the point, just write, the author states. This makes your summary short and to the point.
Step 5: Review and Edit for Accuracy
The last of the four steps is your quality control. Read your summary and the original text so that you can be sure you have not missed any important points.
It is always a good idea to check whether you have not inserted some personal opinions or interpretations implicitly. It is absolutely important that your summary has no personal inclination, i.e., a reader is not able to get any less understanding than with the original work.
Make sure that facts, statistics, and conclusions are in sync with the source material. Even minor errors have the ability to compromise your credibility and confuse the readers.
Lastly, make sure that your summary is smooth and can make sense to a person who has not read the original work. It is to be a self-contained piece of writing that would give a brief idea of the main points of the source material.
Types of Content That Require Objective Summaries
Even the most practiced writers trap themselves into the God-like common pitfalls of writing objective summaries. We found the most common traps that may turn a good summary into a biased, inaccurate, or rather useless one.
Learning about these errors in advance will spare you a lot of revision time later. But most of all, it is so much easier to dodge subjective words and be neutral when you are absolutely clear about what you should be careful about.
So, what are the exact mistakes that can fumble your objective summary? How then can you avoid them altogether?
Including Personal Opinions and Bias
The most common error that any writer commits is allowing his/her thoughts to creep into the summary. We also do this all the time. It was clearly stated that the author illustrates brilliantly, or this rather fallacious argument is indicative that you have moved into the subjective domain.
Your paraphrase should have no personal impressions or judgmental terms. Rather than include the words, the study is indubitably certain, use phrases that have no appeal to the author, using neutral phrases such as the study concludes, or the research indicates. This leaves your summary unbiased, and the reader makes their own judgment.
Be wary of loaded adjectives and adverbs that betray your position. Such words as unfortunately, clearly or obviously should never take place in an objective summary. It is important to note that these are opinion markers that can creep in unconsciously; thus, pay particular attention to them when reading your draft.
Adding Information Not in the Original Text
The other source of error is when one adds external information or supposition to what one is reading. There should be no context, background information, or switch-over to other works, only the original source when summarizing.
This involves the avoidance of the temptation to explain what the author assumes the reader knows. In case the original source fails to define a technical term, do not include it in your summary either. It is your task to make what is there concise, not to add something more or make something clearer than it was stated by the author.
In other cases, writers in unwanted errors involving some of the material they have in their general knowledge and think they are assisting the reader to understand what the author is stating. This, however, alters the summary to an objectification of something other than the actual picture of the real thing.
Focusing on Minor Details Instead of Main Points
Sure enough, to avow, most authors lose track of the thesis and find themselves trapped in some exciting examples or some colorful anecdotes. In your summary, the big picture and key points should be given precedence over the fanciful, undeclared informational stuff.
Ask yourself to what extent this detail bears directly on the main argument given by the author? Otherwise, it is not likely to be in your summary. The best summaries do not try to translate all supporting evidence, but the skeleton of the argument.
We commonly get summaries that sound more like a compilation of unrelated data instead of a comprehensible exposition of the points of author. This occurs when authors do not draw lines between fundamental arguments and example cases.
Making the Summary Too Long or Too Short
To reach a suitable length, a trade of between offering details and being concise must be struck. An overly long summary will be counterproductive to the point of condensing, while an overly short summary will omit critical details.
Typically, an approximate figure should be anywhere around 25-30 percent of the original length. This provides you with ample room to discuss all important principal themes and at the same time puts you under pressure to concentrate on what is really important. To summarize, your summary must not be as long as the original is, but it should be comprehensive.
It is important to remember that various audiences may require varying levels of detail. An overview that can be read by a recruiter skimming through resumes does not need to be as in-depth as the one given in an academic context. Change your length at the same time and remain objective.
Using Direct Quotes Instead of Paraphrasing
Short quotations here and there are occasions, but using the use of direct quotations extensively indicates a lack of understanding. Your summary needs to show that you have read it and are in a position to state whether it has had any effects on your own, upstanding way.
Making a paraphrase indicates that you are familiar with the material, as you are able to combine your own words and still retain the information. This is particularly relevant where you are required to reduce sophisticated arguments to easy language.
When using quotes, they shouldn't be given lightly, but only when necessary in identifying the voice of the author or a point so significant. The fact is that most summaries will be more successful in case you restructure the contents in your own words instead of taping together quotations.
Ignoring the Original Structure and Flow
In your summary, you must keep the original spirit and line of reasoning of the writing you get. Random shuffling of arguments or points by jumping around is detrimental and confuses the readers, hence not representing the argument of author.
Although you do not have to trace all the transitions in the original text, the flow of it should make sense. Arrange current thoughts in such a way that readers can able to follow the thinking process of the author.
Note the way the author makes his or her case. When they provide background information and then offer their main argument, your summary should tend to go in that direction too, but even where you condense each part considerably.
Objective Summary Example: What Works and What Doesn't
Summary of objectives play essential roles in numerous aspects and situations. Knowing how and when such neutral fact-based summaries are necessary will give you a clear idea about why they are considered so important both in professional and academic life.
We have cooperated with specialists in different fields, and the necessity to have good and objective summaries seems to appear in unexpected areas. Whether it is in board rooms or classrooms, the distillation of information without bias is a good skill.
Where could we see that objective summaries are not only useful but also necessary? Let us work out the real areas of the content where objective elaboration is not optional.
Academic Papers and Research Studies
Literature review, research proposal, and scholarly articles require objective reviews as written in academic writing. When conducting a review of past research, you should not give your own judgment, thoughts, and conclusions about a particular study; you have to state the results of each research study without your own comments.
Summaries of research enable other scholars to easily learn the specifics of a study, its findings, and its inferences of the research without going through the whole paper. Any information that you want to convey in the summary should not be subjective concerning the strengths or limitations of the study, but focus more on capturing the main thesis, research methodology, and main findings of the study.
The objective summaries are of great importance to the graduate students who do the literature reviews. They are summaries that will be building blocks to bigger research, and therefore, accuracy and neutrality are out of the picture. The authors concentrate the summary on the findings and conclusions made by the researchers.
Business Reports and Proposals
Executives in corporate settings want brief accounts of long reports, market studies, and strategic plans. A business plan reader who will go through 30-40 different business plans does not have the time to read and find out the essence of every plan.
Such summaries assist the decision-makers in understanding critical material in them without getting engrossed in the comprehensive appendices and supplementary data. Your summary is meant to provide a few points concerning market opportunities, financial projections, and strategic recommendations, not to enter too much detail.
Major decisions are usually made by referring to business summaries, and it is therefore important to be objective. The stakeholders require objective truth to make a decision rather than generalizations based on the interest or doubts of the author towards a specific practice.
Legal Documents and Case Studies
Lawyers are continuously dealing with summarized reports of cases, laws, and court rulings, which are objective in nature. Such summaries enable lawyers to grasp the precedents and the background of the laws in the shortest time possible without having to read the full case files.
Legal summaries have to be accurate and devoid of subjective opinions. An erroneous detail takes some considerations, and therefore, such summaries must be handled with very high standards of care in regard to accuracy and fairness.
Particularly, case briefs have a standard format that introduces facts, issues, holdings, and the reasoning in a structured way that has no bias. The ability to write objective summaries is a baseline skill that law students are taught.
News Articles and Media Content
Media specialists and journalists frequently require objective views of the press releases, speeches, and events. Such are used to allow editors the insight to choose which stories to go behind and act as a background for reporters who follow other events taking place.
News synopses are not allowed to be biased, editorial, or based on predilection. The trial should offer who, what, when, where, and why details without using subjective words that could change the opinion of people.
Media monitoring services offer summaries that help an organization to know how they are being depicted on various platforms and whether they are being depicted fairly through objective summaries. Such summaries do not imply a personal bias toward main themes and key details.
Books and Literature
Objective summaries of books, plays, and other literary works are unique to students, teaching, and literary professionals who routinely prepare objective summaries. The summaries give the readers the idea of the plot, themes, and character development without their own interpretations.
The main difference between literary summaries and analysis is that they are on a tightrope between bringing out main themes and not doing analysis. Your conclusion must give the main idea and its key events, but allow the readers to produce their own ideas of the meaning or quality of the work.
Objective summaries are usually employed by the teachers when they need to introduce children to difficult texts or remind them of what they have read before. These summaries are bare rather than literary analysis.
Technical Documentation and Manuals
On a regular basis, technical writers are making objective summaries of complicated processes, new arrivals of software, and systems specifications. The summaries provide users with the advantage of getting a quick impression of new features or changes without having to read all the details in the documentation.
Technical summaries should not just be correct in their facts, but also attend to key points that have an influence on user experiences. They ought to organize the information in a clear way that can enable readers to easily see what has been changed and how it is going to affect their work.
Release notes: Short descriptions such as new features, bug reports, and system requirements are frequently written like objective descriptions in software release notes. These summaries assist the users and the administrators in knowing updates without getting too many details about the technical implementation.
Scientific Articles and Studies
Objective summaries enable scientists and researchers to keep track of the changes taking place in their areas and they write scientific articles. Abstract parts are brief statements that help an investigator uses to determine the need to read complete articles.
Scientific summaries should not be biased or allow interpretation of any kind other than methodology, results, and conclusions as they were in the original text. The summary ought to incorporate the scope of the research as well as limitations made in the original study, besides showing important results.
Objective summaries of ongoing projects are usually required in research institutions in the application of funding and reporting of progress of the projects. Through these summaries, the reviewers are able to evaluate research objectives and findings without accompanying thoughts regarding the gravity of the work or consequences.
Conclusion
It is far easier to learn to write objective summaries when you have an example of written summaries of good and bad quality in your field of view. We did make two copies of the same summary to understand, exactly, what the difference is between professional work and amateur efforts.
These two examples will demonstrate how a few word choices can keep your summary neutral or add unwanted bias to it. The more you read through what works and fail to do, the more you will learn to recognize them in your own.
Sample Text for Summary Practice
"Climate change is one of the most demanding issues of the day. Recent research by the International Climate Research Institute indicates that the temperature on Earth has increased by 1.2 degrees Celsius since before industrialization. This rise has caused the occurrence of more extreme weather scenarios, such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods, that have devastated millions of people in the world. The study reveals that anthropogenic activities, especially the consumption of fossil fuels, are the main causes of such developments. Scientists have cautioned that unless the effort to curb global warming through cutting down greenhouse gas emissions is done urgently, there are chances that irreversible damage to the planet may be experienced in the next decade. But the paper also notes encouraging signs in renewable energy science and that concerted international action still may limit the most disastrous consequences of climate change."
What Doesn't Work: A Biased Summary
"The most important crisis that the world is going through now is obviously climate change. According to new terrifying research studies conducted by the International Climate Research Center, the temperatures of the Earth have risen by up to 1.2 degrees since pre-industrial times. Such a steep rise has led to devastating life-threatening extreme weather conditions, such as devastating hurricanes, catastrophic floods, damaging droughts, and deadly floods that over the years have proven to affect millions of innocent people around the world. The study reveals clearly that any irresponsible act of burning fossil fuels is indeed the prime cause of these drastic changes, and that the cause is in the form of human action. The scientists sound the evocative call to alarm that in ten years' time our planet will be destroyed completely unless something is done to curb the emission of greenhouse gases asap. Great news is that the study also indicates some promising to occur trends regarding renewable energy technology, and reckons that there still can be some hope and solution in terms of global climate crisis catastrophes."
Problems with This Biased Version
This overview has a drawback in that it is full of individual beliefs and biased words. The use of such words as obviously, alarming, skyrocketed, and catastrophic shows the emotional side of the writer instead of giving the facts as they are.
The language is dramatic and judgmental as opposed to neutral language. Basing moral judgments on such phrases as innocent people and reckless burning, one fails to understand that this kind of judgment is absent in the very text.
Subjective Language Warning Signs
Evaluative adjectives, as “alarming”, “devastating”, and “catastrophic”, point out to the reader that you are no longer just reporting the facts. These are emotional words, and they are absent in cold scholarly compositions.
Opinion markers like “obviously”, “clearly”, and “definitely” indicate that the author is passing judgment and not reporting about something. These certitude statements should never be contained in an objective synthesis.
Emotional Impact vs. Factual Reporting
The biased form makes use of word choices to increase emotional emphasis. Rather than saying that temperatures are increasing, it says that they have skyrocketed. Such a language manipulation alters the perception of the original text of the reader.
Evaluations such as characterization of the use of fossil fuel as reckless are an overstatement of what was said in the source material. When writing a summary, it should not be based on your personality and thoughts on the argument, but it should be similar to the tone of the main writer.
Why Personal Opinions Damage Objectivity
Inserting your own opinions in your summary is basically repackaging the work of an author in your own way. This kills the whole case of forming an objective summary.
Summaries are important to the readers to interpret the material used in the source. When you are falsifying the original text with your preconceptions, you are against not only the author but also the reader.
Maintaining Professional Standards
Academic writing summaries (in the business setting) cannot involve personal opinions. A recruiter going through the research summaries does not need to know how the writer feels about it; they would look for facts.
Summary sections in a resume with subjective terms tend to look unprofessional and may damage your reputation with prospective employers.
Building Trust Through Neutrality
When the summary that you come up with is objective, the reader will believe you projected an accurate picture of the source material. Such trust is needed when communicating in a professional and academic environment.
Objective summarizing enables readers to construct their opinion based on the good information instead of the distorted version on the part of your interpretation.
What Works: An Objective Summary
"Studies conducted at the International Climate Research Institute indicate that the world temperature has been rising since pre-industrial times during a rising of 1.2 degrees Celsius. The document shows that this increased temperature has led to increased instances of extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods, which have affected millions of people all over the world. The study posits that human endeavors, especially the burning of fossil fuels to be the main cause of such variations in temperature. According to the scientists, the Earth is facing the possibility of irreversible harm in the next 10 years unless it takes advantage of the Emergency now to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. The research also remarks on the progress of renewable energy technology and recommends that the unity of many efforts in the mitigation of severe climate effects may help to a great extent."
Why This Version Succeeds
The given summary is effective as it neither reflects the personal opinion of the author nor uses any evaluative terms. It employs the objective reporting language, such as according to research, according to the study, and the scientists say.
The short version has retained all of the important insights of the original work and it is objective of the findings. It shows the balance of the original writer when it comes to the lay out of problems and solution.
Neutral Language Techniques
The use of attributive statements such as the study reveals and researchers discovered leaves the attention on the original authority and not on your meaning. This tool assists you in creating a factual summary that would be credible.
Factual reporting simply uses verifiable information without any emotional and evaluative remarks. The conclusion and data are not biased in the summary.
Effective Attribution Methods
The identification of sources is seen regularly in a good summary. Each key statement is referenced to the research, and it is obvious that these are the findings of the authors, not the laws of the world.
The correct citation skills also assist the reader to know the origin of information, but still leave the summary objective. This will create credibility and prove factual correctness.
Balanced Perspective Approach
The good summary also has the same proportional importance as the original text does. It is neither overselling nor over-focusing on problems and solutions, but both sides represent the source material desired. The use of a consistent tone throughout the summary will enable readers to know what the author really implied instead of how important he or you thinks it should be.
Wide-Ranging Unbiased Coverage
The most significant information of the original text is presented in relevant quantify. The summary does not increase some aspects depending on the interests or interests of the writer. Important points are equally covered, and the readers do not have to think that a certain issue is the argument of writer due to personal emotional influence.
Factual Standards of Accuracy
All the statistics, postulates, and conclusions in the summary of effectiveness are identical to those in the text. This accuracy is plain in objective summaries, which is not negotiable. Accuracy in reporting implies that there should be no approximations and the true meaning of the author should not be altered. Your overview must be precise to an extent such that the original writer would identify his/her work.
Key Differences Analysis
Language options form the most apparent difference between a successful and unsuccessful summary. In the good one, neutral language of reporting is used, although the poor one has used emotions and evaluative language.
There is also a great difference in attribution methods. The productive summary never leaves the source of a claim a mystery, and the flawed ones discussed only display views as inherited facts.
Tone and Objectivity Comparison
The tone is the distinguishing feature between a professional summary and someone who tries to summarize. The effective version uses controlled language all through, and on the other han,d the biased summary alternates between panic and optimism.
The good summary is emotionally neutral, and the readers can objectively process the information, but the problematic one exploits the emotional feeling by playing with words.
Impact on Reader Understanding
An objective summary made clearly will facilitate the readers to have the right understanding of the original text. The polarized version misleads with emotionally-based wording and self-interpreting powers.
The trust that readers develop when they are summarizing information is when these summaries contain reliable, unbiased information. One-sided summaries may negatively impact your credibility and confuse your audience.
Professional Standards Comparison
The quality of writing that meets the standards of academic communication also demands neutrality, which is achieved in the effective summary. The racist interpretation would be intolerable in either work workplace or an educational setting.
Objectivity is also required in the field of business communication. The use of subjective language in a resume summary or a project report will make a candidate look unprofessional, and this can cost him or her a career.
Practical Application Tips
As you compose the summary, read one sentence, and here are the questions to ask yourself: "Would this sentence hold opinion-wise to a person who does not share the same opinion or view on this subject?" In case the answer is negative, then you have probably added personal opinions.
Be especially attentive to adjectives and adverbs. Terms such as the following: important, significant, unfortunately, or clearly are always a warning that you have crossed the line into interpretation.
Self-Assessment Questions for Objectivity
It is easy to detect bias when you have certain questions to act as a guide during your review. You should put a question to yourself whether your summary would appear to the person who does not agree with the issue.
Checking of neutrality should revolve around the use of language, attribution, and general tone. Your conclusion must be neutral to an extent where neither of the readers is able to conclude upon your own position.
Language Monitoring Strategies
The use of words has a great influence on objectivity. Make a mental list of warning words that will generally indicate the use of subjective language, and consciously try to keep yourself out of them in your summary.
The choice of phrases is also important, along with the choice of words. Select phrases that will make the attribution distant, such that there is a hint between you and the statements you are making.
Revision Techniques for Objectivity
When you revise it several times, you then discover that you are biased, but you are not when you are writing up your draft. Read your summary with a special eye to evaluative words and personal opinions.
Another person reviewing your paper objectively can assist you in uncovering your bias. Request another colleague to single out some language that appears subjective or emotive.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learning the art of objective summarization will reap its reward in any academic and professional life. The strategies discussed here, including the use of neutral language, sticking to key points, among others, provide all that is necessary to come up with brief but factually correct summaries.
And you are steadily aiming not to have personal bias in the reproduction of the original. Be it a resume summary to impress a recruiter or a summary of researched work, it is recommended that you avoid personal views as far as you can so that your work can be accepted as believable and serve your readers well.
The action step becomes unsaid after practice. Pay attention to gain sight of the source material, its main takeaways, and represent information in your own words, being objective. And then you will be in the spot where you can ensure your summaries are at a professional level when you avoid all those pitfalls we have mentioned today.
Value Summaries that reduce complex information into understandable forms are becoming important. Practice these methods from now on, and you will see you have one of the greatest communication tools at your disposal: objective summary writing.
What is an objective summary?
An objective summary is a neutral, fact-based condensation of source material that presents main points without personal opinions or bias. It reflects the original text's key information while remaining objective and free of personal opinions.
How long should an objective summary be?
An effective summary should be about 25-30% of the original text length. This allows you to cover key takeaways and main points while keeping the content concise and focused on essential content without unnecessary details.
What's the difference between a summary and an objective summary?
A regular summary may include personal interpretations and evaluative language, while an objective summary strictly presents information without bias. Objective summaries use neutral attribution phrases and avoid subjective language entirely.
Can I include quotes in an objective summary?
Yes, but use quotes sparingly and only when essential to capture the author's specific voice or crucial point. Most effective summaries rely on paraphrasing to demonstrate understanding while maintaining the summary's flow and concise nature.
How do I avoid personal bias in my summary?
Use neutral attribution phrases like "the author states" or "the research indicates." Avoid evaluative adjectives and subjective language. Focus on presenting facts without your own interpretations or emotional reactions to the material.
What should I do if the original text is confusing?
Summarize only what you clearly understand from the original text. Don't add explanations or interpretations that aren't explicitly stated. If concepts are unclear, write the summary based on what the author actually presented.
How do I identify the main points for my summary?
Look for topic sentences, thesis statements, and conclusions in the source material. Focus on arguments that directly support the central thesis rather than examples or supporting details that illustrate those points.
Should I reorganize information in my objective summary?
Generally, follow the original text structure when possible. You can condense sections, but avoid reorganizing in ways that might change the author's intended emphasis or logical flow of arguments.
What's the biggest mistake when writing objective summaries?
Including personal opinions and subjective language is the most common error. Words like "obviously," "clearly," or "unfortunately" signal that you've moved beyond objective reporting into personal interpretation.
How do I know if my summary is truly objective?
Ask yourself: "Could someone with opposite views on this topic accept my summary as factually accurate?" If yes, you've likely maintained objectivity. Your summary should be so neutral that readers can't detect your personal stance.