Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021

Summarize a multimodal text to deepen your understanding
Reading and writing about multimodal texts
Academic Reading and Writing

Your goal in summarizing a multimodal text is to state the work’s central idea and key points objectively and accurately, in your own words, and usually in paragraph form. Since a summary should be fairly short, you must decide what is most important. Here is the summary Ren Yoshida drafted as he prepared to write an analysis of the advertisement in 5a.

The Equal Exchange advertisement is selling the message that together farmers and consumers hold the future of the planet in their hands. At the center of the ad is a farmer whose outstretched hands, full of raw coffee, offer the fruit of her labor and a partnership with consumers. The ad suggests that in a global world producers and consumers are bound together. A cup of coffee is more than just a morning ritual. A cup of coffee is part of an equal exchange that empowers farmers to stay on their land and empowers consumers to do the right thing.

— Ren Yoshida, student

For advice on summarizing a source effectively, see the box on page 64.