A Short Guide to Writing an Effective Report Summary

You've written your report, you've gathered all the facts and marshaled all your arguments. There's only one task standing between you and publication - writing a summary. So, what is the best approach to writing a report summary? This article guides you through the basics.

1. Defining a summary. Before doing anything, it's good to be clear about exactly what we mean by summary. The dictionary describes "a shortened form of a report, summing up the main points ... without unnecessary formalities or delay." In other words, the summary does exactly what it says on the tin: it gives your audience a concise re-cap.

2. The purpose of a summary. To understand why you need to write an effective summary, you must be clear about how many of your readers will behave.

Most readers, presented with a long, complicated report, will not read it from cover to cover. Instead, they will look for a shortcut. If they see "Summary" in the Table of Contents, nine out of ten will look there first. More important, if time is short, that might be the only place they look.

In all honesty, your purpose in creating a summary is to provide a cheat-sheet for your busy readers - a place they can go to quickly understand the content and get all the main points carefully and concisely recapped.

3. Being methodical. Grasping this last point makes the task of writing a summary a whole lot easier. To create a summary, you must methodically review your report, section by section, and extract the key points. Remember, you will likely need a couple of iterations before you have boiled everything down concisely enough.

This methodical approach is also a great opportunity to proofread each section and carry out any last minute editing and refining.

4. What not to include. Clearly, the summary is not the place to be re-opening a debate, scoring one last point or over-selling your recommendations; and, it is definitely not the place to be introducing any new material. Do this at your peril.

5. The back-to-front approach. Of course, writing the summary could be your starting point, not something you leave until last. By summarizing your key points up front in a structured way, you are effectively creating your report outline.

Taking this approach means all you need to do is add detail to the outline you just created. However, it's possible that as you fill in the detail you will make changes to the sequence and structure of the body. If so, make sure part of your editing routine includes going back and making those changes in the summary, because it is very easy to forget to do this.

Two points to conclude. First, if done thoughtfully and methodically, writing a summary is a relatively simple task. Second, always follow the golden rule of summary creation: stay ruthlessly focused on developing a succinct re-cap of what you have written in the body of your report.


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Andrew Jackson is the co-founder of Pacific Blue Solutions, an organization dedicated to helping businesses and individuals enhance communication skills and learning. To find more information on writing a report summary or to sign up for our popular report writing mini-course for free, visit http://www.pacificblue.co.uk/blog/bid/36517/Writing-an-effective-report-summary