A summary is not just a bunch of sentences put together in a paragraph. Why learn to summarize? A summary means you are telling the main idea of someone else's article, book, or other text. The technical aspects can be learned in any of several ways: by taking a class, by studying books on writing, by working with a partner or a group and acting on their feedback. This Study Guide consists of approximately 36 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of On Writing Well. Apart from that it helps me to memorize my lessons learned. On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. ... Summary Writing Format. A thesis is your idea and the main point of your essay. How to Write a Summary . It is done by choosing the most essential elements that the writer has stated in the main body or main dialogue and try to present it briefly once again at the last part. If you are writing a summary and response paper, you will need to say what the main idea is of the article you are summarizing and then your thesis would be your response to that article. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Image used with permission by Mark Ostow/Yale Alumni Magazine. Summary writing is the act or the formal writing process of creating or making a conclusion using a few words to highlight the most important information of an essay, speech, or other address. When writing a summary, remember that it should be in the form of a paragraph. Writing well is not a gift reserved for the few but a set of skills that can be learned by anyone. It should be well written with a beginning, middle and end. The 92-year-old left behind one of the classics of writing instruction manuals as his legacy, On Writing Well.Since its first printing in 1976, the book has sold 1.5 million copies, and Zinsser made sure to update the book often. Improving your vocabulary, and working on understanding words, and their shades of meaning, is critical. A summary begins with an introductory sentence that states the text’s title, author and main point of the text as you see it. Author William Zinsser died at his Manhattan home on Tuesday, May 12, 2015. A well written summary is a story about a story. By providing a summary I hope to help other developers to improve their writing. Summary writing helps students develop skills that can be used in school and at work: Evaluate: separate the important from unimportant It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. The article is a summary of my lessons learned from On Writing Well by William Zinsser.