Short and Sweet

Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) of a work into your own words, including only the main point(s). Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material. Here is an example:

Original passage:
Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes. Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): 46-47.

An acceptable summary:
Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).

A plagiarized version:
Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes.

This week, you are required to read two short sections in your textbook about the rise of cinema in Hollywood: "The Hollywood Studio System" (43-52) and "The World-Wide Spread of Cinema" (53-61). Choose ONE of these sections to summarize, putting the main ideas of it into your own words.

Also, don't forget:

1. Place film titles in italics or all caps (e.g., SHERLOCK, JR.).
2. Posts should not exceed 300 words.
3. All postings should be published by 11:59 PM every Saturday.