In a research essay , not only direct quotations and paraphrase as outside sources are used to support the idea , summaries are often good supporting details .
The following steps may be useful to a successful summary :
1) Read what you want to summarize carefully and make sure you understand it .
2) Highlight topic sentences and concluding sentences .
3) Identify the key points or main ideas if there are no topic sentence
4) Delete supporting details , unimportant information , anecdotes , examples , illustration , data .etc.
5) Paraphrase the main ideas by reducing complex sentences to simple sentences , simple sentences to phrases , phrases to single words.

