Summary writing strategies based on discourse structures, relevance theory and kernel preservation

This paper explores methods of guiding summary writers based on the discourse structure of the material being summarized. Multi-item discourse strudures are identified, and the problem-solution macrostrudures (of special interest for technical writing) are used as an example of how we can preserve the ''gist" (content plus organization) of the original message in such genres. A similar approach is taken for the established binary logical relations of discourse connection, which can form the basis of text macrostructure or microstructure.