Investigating Summary Typology: Considerations for Classification

The professional writing teacher who undertakes to teach practical summary-writing soon realizes that condensed texts take many forms and that summarizing skills must be adapted to specific contexts and fields. The need for a clear description and classification of summary types quickly becomes apparent. This paper explores methods of describing and classifying summaries on the basis of structural, metatextual, cognitive, and contextual criteria in an attempt to provide a multidimensional framework for classifying summaries. 37