An oral or written telling of the important ideas in a story.

Summarizing is a process in which a reader synthesizes the important ideas in a text. Teaching students to summarize helps them generate main ideas, connect central ideas, eliminate redundant and unnecessary information, and remember what they read.

Creating a short description of a document or information object that includes its most salient features for a purpose. Some computer programs that summarize text use statistical methods and document structure to identify and rank sentences in a document as candidates for inclusion in a summary.

In online moderation, summarizing involves condensing the discussion comments into a short report. Summarizing the content of discussions encourages participants to stay engaged by showing that their opinions are valued, and summaries can help people come up to the same speed on issues.

cutting down a selection to about one-third of its original length without changing its basic meaning