How to Write a Précis

Pamela Russell

• Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
• Year: 1988
• Print ISBN: 9780776601434
• eBook ISBN: 9780776608990
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

How to Write a Précis is designed to teach students how to read and comprehend a text, and then reduce its length without omitting the essential details or radically altering the style of the original. It contains theoretical background, practical step-by-step instructions on how to write a précis, sample précis, and a variety of exercises. Also included are sections on popularizing and abstracting.

Its tightly organized structure and straightforward, direct style make How to Write a Précis the ideal text for students and teachers of translation, of English as a second language, and of all types of English Composition. It is intended for use in universities, community colleges, high schools, and in adult education. The exercises have been carefully chosen and organized so as to provide optimum hands-on learning experience for the reader; they vary in difficulty, so that the teacher may select those that suit the level of proficiency and the special interests of a particular group of students.

Part One

CHAPTER 1

Brevity is the soul of wit. (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii)

What is a Précis?

DEFINING THE PRÉCIS

In a broad sense, the term “précis” can be defined as a summary—a summary of the contents of a document or series of documents, a summary of a series of events, or a summary of the proceedings of a meeting or conference.

However, the term is usually used in a more specialized way, to designate a particular type of summarizing exercise used for academic purposes. In this book, the word “précis” will be used in this more specialized sense: it will refer to a written text, of a prescribed length, that accurately summarizes a longer passage. The précis should accurately convey all the primary ideas of the original, omitting details and ideas of secondary importance. It should be written largely in terms other than those used in the original. It should be an uncommented text: it is not a critical review and must not express the précis-writer’s opinions.

TYPES OF SUMMARIES

All types of summary-writing are based on the same general principles—the discrimination between essential and non-essential material, the judicious selection of key ideas, and the compilation of the essential information into a new text.

There are a variety of specialized forms of the summary—abstracts, précis, and abridgements, to name a few. Types of summaries vary primarily with respect to their purpose. A summary must be oriented towards its prospective audience, and the summary-writer, like the translator, must take into consideration the purpose of the exercise and the needs of the recipient of the target text. The précis, for example, is basically an academic exercise—hence the emphasis on the style and readability of the finished product as a piece of prose in its own right. Abstracts, on the other hand, are pragmatic texts designed to be used primarily by specialists interested in the content of recent publications in their field. As for abridgements, they often simplify as well as summarize material: the abridged texts that one finds in Reader’s Digest, Coles Notes, or Classic Comics not only summarize but also popularize the original material and are designed for audiences who for a variety of reasons do not choose to tackle the original material.

It would be useful at this point to examine some of the varieties of summaries, thereby clarifying how précis-writing resembles, and differs from, other types of summary-writing.

The Précis

The précis has several distinctive features. First, it is usually of a prescribed length— in many cases, one-third of the length of the original. Moreover, in précis-writing, emphasis is placed on writing the summary in terms other than those used in the original, with the exception of a few key words or phrases. The précis thus combines the characteristics of the paraphrase and the summary: the précis should be a fluid text which stands on its own as an accurate, condensed re-creation of the source text, rather than a collage of expressions and sentences copied from the original. In précis-writing, the quality of original composition is an important factor.

This emphasis on original composition is understandable, since précis-writing is primarily an academic exercise. Précis-writing exercises have long been used in secondary schools and schools of higher learning to develop language and communication skills. In this context, the précis is of great educational value. On the one hand, it develops passive language skills—the ability to read intelligently, to detect the principal ideas and the pattern of thought in texts, and to become aware of the logic and quality of thought underlying a passage. On the other hand, it develops active language skills—the ability to use words effectively and to write clearly and precisely.

Furthermore, précis-writing is an excellent testing tool, and has been used as part of entrance examinations by colleges, universities, and civil services in countries such as Great Britain, France, and Canada. It enables examiners to evaluate not only the linguistic skills but also the general intellectual abilities of the candidates.

The Abstract

An abstract is a summary of the essential facts and theories presented in a report, article, or other document. “Author abstracts” are written by the author or publishing house and are published along with the document itself; “access abstracts” are written by information specialists and published in collections by abstracting services, or stored in computer memories.1 Perhaps the best known collection of access abstracts is the voluminous collection called Chemical Abstracts.

These abstracting and indexing services have been established to deal with the enormous amount of literature being published and to help the individual scientist or specialist keep abreast of publications in his or her field. Thousands of abstracting services exist, covering fields such as science, technology, and the humanities.

Most libraries provide series of abstract journals containing abstracts of articles from a wide variety of fields. Most of these abstract journals are published on a regular basis (annually or even more frequently) and contain subject indexes; they thus provide a most efficient means for the specialist to gain access to a wide range of material. Interlingual abstracts allow researchers to learn what foreign-language documents are being published and to decide whether they want to have a document translated.

Abstracts are an integral part of library science and information analysis. As the field of computerized language processing has grown, progress has been made in developing automatic abstracting systems. Interestingly enough, a computerized subject indexing system used by the British National Bibliography is called PRECIS.

In Abstracting Concepts and Methods, Borko and Bernier describe the abstract as follows:

An abstract is a well-defined type of literature with definite attributes and a unique style. Abstracting is not a ‘natural’ form of writing; it requires training. The abstract must be brief and accurate, and it must be presented in a format designed to facilitate the skimming of a large number of abstracts in a search for relevant material.2

There are two standard types of abstract, with two distinct functions. The descriptive, or indicative, abstract describes the scope of the text, but does not contain extensive data and is not designed to replace the original. Rather, it is designed to help the reader decide whether or not the original is relevant to his or her research. The second type of abstract, the informative abstract, gives more detailed information on the content of the article; it can in some cases replace the source text and save the reader the bother of reading the original document.

Particularly in the fields of science and technology, the abstract is theme-oriented: it focuses on specific topics in the original text. The descriptive abstract summarizes purpose and methodology, and the informative abstract summarizes purpose, methodology, observations, conclusions, and recommendations.

The Popularized Abridgement

Abridged versions of books are used as a means of popularizing literature. The child curls up with the Classic Comic of David Copperfield; the high-school student crams the night before the big test by reading the Coles Notes abridgement of Romeo and Juliet; the cottager keeps the bookshelves stacked with Reader’s Digest versions of novels. Although reading a condensed version is not the same as savouring the original work in its entirety, these publications do introduce literary works to people who would perhaps never wade through the more lengthy and sophisticated originals. In today’s world of TV dinners and convenience foods, the popularity of “instant” literature is not surprising.

Similarly, much technical and scientific information is disseminated in popularized form through articles written for the layman with a casual interest in a specialized field. In this popularization process, technical knowledge is condensed, simplified, and explained so that it can be understood by a broad non-specialized readership.

Summary Records of Proceedings

Many situations call for the summarizing of spoken material. Students take notes during lectures; journalists summarize speeches and statements; secretaries take minutes of meetings. In all these situations, the original material is presented in oral form, and the “reporter” makes notes during the proceedings in order to record the salient points.

Some organizations provide comprehensive summary reports of their proceedings. The United Nations uses the term “précis” to designate the summary records that it provides of meetings held by some of its various bodies. These summary records are prepared in the official languages in which the proceedings take place, and are subsequently translated into all the other official languages of the body concerned. These summary records should not be confused with minutes; they are more comprehensive than minutes, and constitute the official records of the bodies in question. These précis, or summary records, are drawn up by the UN translation services; thus summary-writing represents a substantial part of the work done by UN translators.

In other situations, such as UNESCO symposiums, the proceedings are printed in their entirety in the languages in which they are held, and translation-summaries are provided in the other relevant languages.

THE SUMMARY AS A SURROGATE TEXT

All the types of summaries that have been described are based on previously existing material. They are surrogate texts, as are the translation, the paraphrase, the excerpt, the review, and numerous other types of texts. Surrogate texts clearly vary with respect to their form and the nature of their relationships with their respective source texts, but they have in common the fact that they are target texts resulting from a transformation of source material. (In the case of the summary record, the source material is spoken rather than written.)

It would be useful to look at a few of these document surrogates3 and see where the similarities and differences lie.

The “summary” is a condensed version of an original text. It is necessarily briefer than the original, and it contains only the main ideas of the source text.

The “translation” is a surrogate text which transfers an original message into another language. Translation is thus an interlingual process which requires the reformulation of the message in another linguistic system. The translated text should accurately reflect all the content of the original.

The “paraphrase” is a rewording of an original message in the same language as the original—a sort of intralingual translation.4 It involves the systematic substitution of one lexical item, expression, or sentence for another, and the finished product closely resembles the original in structure and in length.

The “extract” or the “excerpt” is a portion of an original text that has been copied verbatim. Unlike the summary, it is not a scale model; rather, it reproduces segm...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Footnotes