Here are some examples of article summaries. Author names have been omitted. A good summary should give readers a clear idea of what an article is about, what arguments it makes and what conclusions is reaches. The point of summarizing readings is to digest and interpret the information for the benefit of the rest of the class.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.umw.edu/journals.htm?issn=0959-3845&volume=18&issue=2&articleid=1502391&show=html
This paper describes exactly what a weblog is and how it developed from the first blog by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. By observing 203 blogs, the researchers look into how people use the freedom they have with blogs. What they found out was that while bloggers form connections with various topics on the internet, they frequently use their page as a creative space to express their individualism.
The above summary gives a basic idea of what the article is about, but it could use more detail. From just glancing at the conclusions, it seems there is more to it than what is described above. The URL is problematic because it is restricted to UMW. It would have been better to use this URL, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1502391, which can be found by Googling the article title, “Weblogs as a bridging genre.”
The mystery of the webpage is complicated thought of those who do not understand what makes up the web. There is no World Wide Web without hypertext, so why not understand what the driving force behind the one piece of technology use on a daily basis. Though this article is well over twenty years old it explains hypertext in a simple manner in which anyone could understand. The article explores the future (today) of the hypertext and how it will change the way we even think. Seems as though they nailed the head on the coffin with that statement. Additionally, the article explains the history of hypertext and how it eventually was used to create the World Wide Web. The article even explores the limitations of hypertext during that time period. Such limitations of hypertext was the overwhelming amount of data associated with it. However, for the most part we have overcome this dilemma with better internet connections, faster speed, and more storage on our devices. Learn how the web came to be with this intriguing piece of history on the explanation of hypertext.
This communicates some information about the article, but is more like a teaser to get you to read it than a summary. It should tell us something more about hypertext than just saying that the article explains hypertext. The point of summarizing is not to get us to read the articles, but to make it so that we don’t need to read them.
This is the abstract from the article, “Engineering a Principle: ‘End-to-End’ in the Design of the Internet.” It is a good example of a summary, although the language is more formal than what we might use.
