How To Summarize An Article In 5 Simple Steps

One of the most useful skills you can learn is how to summarize an article. It can be useful in a variety of situations including studying and work.Creating a summary of an article is a great way to condense information so you don’t have to read the full article each time. Summarizing an article makes it easier to understand and retain information without getting lost in the details. That is true for any kind of article, including research papers, news stories, and blog posts.

The summary of an article, when done right, captures the main idea and key points in your own words, in just a few sentences or paragraphs. In this guide we will walk you through a simple five‑step process for creating article summaries. We will shows you what to avoid and list a few useful tip and tools that can help you in your workflow of creating summaries of articles.

What is an article summary?

An article summary answers one simple question: “What is this article about?”
When you summarize an article, you restate the article’s main idea and most important supporting points, also called key points, objectively, written in your own words. A summary should not include details that are not central to the main topic of the article.

A strong article summary:

• Includes the name of the author and article title
• Clearly states the thesis or main claim of the article
• Condenses the key arguments or findings
• Avoids personal opinion or critique

You will use article summaries all over:

• in school for literary essays or journal articles
• at work to brief teammates on meetings or reports
• in creative writing

In this guide, we look at summarizing articles specifically, but if you want to learn more about this general skill, read how to make a summary to apply it more broadly across various formats

How to summarize an article in 5 simple steps

These five steps work for summarizing most article types, whether it is something from the news, a blog article, opinion pieces from a magazine, or journal entries. Follow them to learn how to create a summary of an article.

1. Read the article and skim the structure

You can start the process of creating a summary of an article by first skimming the article to understand what kind of text you are dealing with. This will help you get an idea of how to approach the summary.

A summary of a news report will look quite different from a research article. Reading through the article quickly will help you map the sections you need to include.

Then read more carefully and look for the main elements of an article summary:

• The thesis or main idea: often in the introduction or conclusion
• Headings and subheadings: these show the structure you should follow
• Topic sentences: in each paragraph, especially at the the beginning

If you’re working with a journal article, pay particular attention to the abstract and conclusion, as well as other requirements, like citations. These parts of the article usually tell you the research question and list the major findings in a way that is easy to understand.

2. Identify the main points and supporting arguments

Once you’ve read the article, list out all of the essentials. This will give you the rough structure of your article summary.

For a general article, that essentials will be:

• The main claim or argument
• The key supporting points or reasons
  “evidence” (statistics, examples, or cases that are central to supporting the main argument of the article)

For a research paper or journal article, focus on:

• The research question or purpose
• The methods (briefly tell what they did)
• The main results or findings
• The conclusion or implications

An easy way to summarize an article is to create a quick outline of it with one bullet per major section or idea. If a detail doesn’t help explain the article’s main idea or findings, you probably don’t need to include it in the summary of your article.

Read more on note-taking for meetings. You can use the techniques listed for more than just meetings.

3. Write the summary in your own words

Next, turn your notes into a short article summary by connecting the dots.

A simple structure to use follows this order:

1. Intro sentence: mention the author, article title, and a brief, condensed version of the main idea. Example: “In her article ‘[Title],’ [Author] argues that…”
2. Body: 2-5 sentences that cover the most important points of the article or findings in order.
3. Closing sentence: briefly state the overall conclusion or the significance of the findings.

Keep these rules in mind:

• Don’t copy phrases, rewrite in your own words instead.
• Only include what the article claims, not your opinion.
• Keep your tone neutral and factual.

If you’re summarizing an article for an assignment at school, you should check whether you need to include citation details like the name of the journal, the year it was published, or DOI) at the end of the summary.

4. Keep it objective and concise

A summary does not mean the same thing as a review or critique of an article. That means the approach to creating one is also different. Keep these in mind:

• No personal opinions (“I think,” “In my opinion,” “I agree,” “This is boring”).
• Don’t add any new examples or data that weren’t in the article.
• Only add information that directly supports the main idea.

In general, a summary should be shorter than the original article. As a rule of thumb, the summary should be one-third or less of the article’s length, unless otherwise stated. This also depends on the amount and complexity of the ideas in the article you are summarizing.

When creating your article summary, focus on:

• Why the article or study was created
• What was discovered or what the article argues
• Why that matters

5. Revise and edit your summary

The final step is to compare your summary with the original article:

• Does your summary capture the main idea of the article accurately?
• Did you include the most important points and leave out minor details?
• Did you avoid copying sentences and phrases too closely and rephrase the article in your own words?

Finally, edit your summary for:

• Clarity: use short, direct sentences
• Flow: logical structure and order of ideas
• Style: objective, third‑person voice

If possible, read your article summary aloud to catch any instances of awkward phrasing or information that is missing.

Summary AI is a great tool if you have many meetings each week. You can ask it to join any meeting, create a transcript, and generate an AI summary of everything that was discussed.
Summary AI turns long recordings into transcripts and concise notes, with clear, searchable summaries of what was said in the room, as well as highlights and action items

Tips for how to summarize an article effectively

Once you have the basic steps of how to create a summary of your article, you can use these tips to make your summaries stronger.

Write about “why,” not just “what”

For research papers and journal articles, don’t just list the findings from the article. Make sure your article summary connects it with:

• Why the research was done
• What question it answered
• What the key results were
• Why those results are important

However, remember to remain objective. You are not giving you opinion. For more info, read our article on objective summaries.

Use a simple structure for article summaries
You can use this basic structure almost every time you want to create a summary of an article:

• Sentence 1: author + title + main idea.
• Sentences 2-3: major points or arguments listed in order.
• Sentences 4-5: key evidence or results + the conclusion.

If you’re summarizing several articles for a research summary, instead of summarizing each article separately, group them by theme or finding. This makes your writing more logical and easier to read than a simple list of articles and findings.

Let AI help, but don’t skip the review

There are many AI tools for summarizing that can give you a quick rough draft of an article. These are good for laying the foundation for a summary by highlighting key sentences and condensing information. They are useful when you are short on time or want a quick starting point.

However, you still need to:

• Check the summary for how accurate and nuanced it is
• Adapt the summary to the length and tone you need
• Make sure the summary reflects the author’s argument in a way that is fair

AI can work as a quick summary generator that saves you time, but it can not replace human judgment perfectly. One method that can work is using AI on the first pass and tidying it up thorougly manually.

Common mistakes to avoid in article summarization

A few mistakes show up over and over in weak summaries. Here are the biggest ones to avoid.

Copying instead of summarizing

Taking sentences or long sections directly from the article is not summarizing. It can actually lead to problems and accusations of plagiarism. Make sure you always rephrase ideas in your own words and change the structure as well as the wording to fit the logic of your summary.

Adding your opinions or analysis

A summary should be neutral. Don’t add your opinion and don’t treat your summary as a critique of the article you are summarizing.

Here are a few things to avoid:

• “I agree/disagree…” phrases
• Value judgments
• New examples that are not in the article
• Getting lost in minor details

If you try to include every example, statistic, or side point, your article summary will be too long and feel cluttered. Here’s what you should stick to:

• Main idea
• Main arguments
• Main findings
• Forgetting to name the source

In academic settings, a summary must tell us who wrote the article and what it’s called. Remember to include citation details.

Examples of summarized articles (short patterns)

Here are two short patterns you can adapt. Treat these as templates you can use when creating a summary.

Example 1: news or blog article summary

In “Title of Article,” Author explains that [main idea]. They argue that [key point 1] and [key point 2], using [brief mention of key evidence]. The article concludes that [conclusion or implication].

Example 2: journal article summary

In “Title of Study,” Author and colleagues investigate [research question] using [methods, very briefly]. They find that [main result 1] and [main result 2], which suggests that [implication]. The authors conclude that [final takeaway for the field].

Get instant AI summaries with Summary AI

Summarizing articles is an important skill to learn, but once you get the hang of it, it can be quite easy to churn out article summaries. More difficult and time consuming is summarizing meetings.

If you have many meetings each week, you know how much valuable time it can consume. Another problem is retaining the information from those meetings.

Summary AI helps you by joining any meeting call you want it to. It records and transcribes everything that is said and creates a searchable summary that you can share with your team or keep for personal use. The tool highlights action items and makes sure everyone is on the same page with the help of AI summaries.