Do you have a hard time figuring out what to write in a summary? Do you hate reading great walls of text? Is it difficult to find a layout that best suits your topic or research? Do you need a compressed and purposeful summary report but you don't know how to make one? Well, with the help of our high-quality, time-saving, printable, professionally written, and 100% customizable in MS Word, Pages, Google Docs summary templates, now you know you can! Create your own concise and understandable summary reports ranging from basic summary reports to executive summary reports, project summary reports, meeting summary reports, and even business Summary Report Templates—all thanks to the variety of templates available to you on our website. Why exchange comfort and convenience to make a summary report when our templates can help you make amazing outputs that will impress your boss? Subscribe today and you will never miss out on all our great products that give you the ease and convenience you deserve.
How to Write a Summary Report
Usually, in business, a summary report is the concise documentation of business research. Sometimes though, it is simply a compacted version of a larger text that holds all important details. Thus, when writing a summary report, you first need to know what kind of research or document you are trying to summarize so you can then properly construct it. In creating a good summary report, it needs to have a justification for the research, explain the findings, and mention the suggestions for improvement on the less productive parts. It can be difficult, true, but not impossible, and here are a few tips to help you out in making a summary report:
1. Fully Comprehend What You're Summarizing
Before you start summarizing, you have to actually read and understand what needs to be summarized and report about. No template in the world can help you if your plan for summarizing a document is to merely skim the text and jot down what you think are "highlights." That's not how summarizing works, and for a simple report to be effective, you have to be concise but be informational.
2. Emphasize Important Data
When you start to analyze your data, find the most relevant elements to write in your summary. If you're making a weekly or monthly audit report, emphasize more on the data involving checks and balances and money expenditures during said week/month. When making a summary for research focusing on management, on the other hand, focus on data pertaining to employee productivity, the satisfaction when working under said management, and everything else related to the topic.
3. Give the Main Points
When summarizing a research report, you want to make sure that the main points are clear and understandable. Making a summary doesn't mean that you shouldn't explain the main points; it just means you have to stick to the important details relevant to the text you're trying to make compact. For example, when you give the important points of a project, you don't just lay out a list of bullets with phrases and call it a summary; you take those bulleted phrases and give a brief but informative explanation below.
4. Support Your Arguments
One common mistake made when trying to support arguments could be attempting to find help from outside sources that don't really coincide with your main points. That does not mean that outside sources are not helpful, but as much as possible, find supportive arguments within the research itself to give both the main points and the supporting arguments solidity. When this no longer yields results, then you can find material from somewhere else; however, make sure to read it and check to see if it is actually connected to the main point. Though, in general, supportive arguments in professional reports are abundant in the main text and around the main points if you know what you are looking for.
5. Proofread
When you're done, proofread. The first draft is usually not the best, and minor changes can be made to improve the summary overall: sentences can be more concise, grammatical and spelling errors can be edited, even something as small as punctuation mark errors may be skimmed over until after 3 or 4 more sessions of proofreading.
