How to write a Precis?

Presenting a concise and captivating precis is a skill to learn. If you are versed in writing precis, you can turn lengthy passages into a few words without changing their main theme or idea behind them. Seems interesting, isn’t it?

Moreover, if you are a university student and struggling with your precis writing assignment then you can get assignment writing help from the experts online. Also, professionals have crafted this insightful blog for your convenience that guides you in writing effective and to-the-point precis writing.

Precis: What is it?

A precis is a mini version of an original passage: it retains the essence of the original passage accompanied by the mood and tone of the author. You have to write this in your own words but should not add one’s subjectivity or personal comments to the precis. You must try to retain the original author’s voice and opinions.

Let’s learn about the writing style, writing must be clear with effective sentences and language should be flawless. Eventually, it is your coherent views, presented in the precis would matter the most. You can achieve this by being concise and to the point.

You must avoid, long sentences and transitions between words must be smooth and consistent.

Therefore, precis writing must make sense, be logical in its content, coherent and of course, presentable.

Precis: Why do we need it?

The main object of precis writing is to present brief yet enriching information to save time reading unnecessary details. The scope of precis writing is wide, lawyers, journalists, students and business secretaries freely use precis writing regularly in their day-to-day activities.

Lawyers use it to summarise the main points of their cases, editors and reports summarise news and speeches, and students use this to make notes from lectures and textbooks. It helps in compressing lengthy documents into a concise form. Thus, it saves students from the time-consuming process of re-reading long lectures, reports or articles.

Types of Precis

Before knowing how to write good precis writing, let’s learn about its type. So, you will understand it clearly.

Precis of Speech

In this type of precis writing, you need to keep the original theme intact but write a summary of the passage in your own words.

Precis of Continuous Matter

Examples of precis of continuous matter are evidence reports, question and answer forms, and parliamentary reports. In this type, all sorts of matter fall except communication. One more thing to remember is the date of the passage is not included in this precis.

Precis of Correspondence

This type of precis writing is divided into two types, Index precis and Narrative precis. The index precis is presented in a table form, whereas the narrative precis is descriptive.

Telegraphese

The last type of precis writing is telegraphese, as the name suggests, this type follows the telegram style summary, uses fewer words yet keeps the original message and idea intact.

5 Steps of Writing an Effective Precis

Now, you have a bit of knowledge about what a precis is and the purpose behind writing this. Next, you will learn the 5 important ways to write an effective and strong precis. These 5 steps will act as a guideline for you are as follows:

Read The Text and Collect Information

The more you read, more better you will understand. By reading, you will be able to extract the important ideas and arguments of the author. The best way to follow this step is to write down whatever you think is important as you read.

Re-read the article as many times as you can, it helps in understanding the essence of the article. In this way, you won’t miss out on important data. Later, you can sort out important information from your detailed notes.

Identify The Author’s Main Points

The second step is to summarise the author’s main point of view. This step won’t be tough after completing the first step.

You can go back to your notes and take a look at all the points you have mentioned. All you need to do is to rank the points and arguments according to their relevance and remove those points which are of no use. Hence, this step helps you in separating weeds from your notes.

Make a Mind Map

In this step, all you need to start shaping your notes by making a rough outline with all the important points. Read it and see whether it is aligned with the original text or not. In this step, you can add further points or omit any if you feel like it.

The basic idea behind this step is just to be all ready with a proper draft of precis writing in your mind.

Connect Those Points

Here comes our main step, which is creating a valuable precis. Now, pick up your notes, remember not to add any new ideas, extract the important information from your words, and re-word them into paragraph form.

You can smoothly connect them by using fluent transition words, filling the gaps and providing coherence to your writing.

Review and Edit

This is a last yet important step to follow, editing your last draft is a prerequisite. You should never hand over your first draft before thoroughly proofreading it.

As a precautionary measure, you can use spelling check, or grammar corrector software, read it again with fresh eyes or take help from your peers to review your precis writing. If nothing works, then you can get online precis writing help from our experts.

Do’s and Don’ts of Precis writing

Do’s in a Precise:

• Start your precis by providing a suitable title in your own words

• Highlight the main idea of the article, then you can present facts, points, methods etc used by the author

• While compressing the article, always retain the important concepts, data and keywords.

• For your audience, you must include the author’s full name and the title of the passage.

• Always write in the third person, despite the author writing from a first-person perspective.

• Always write precis writing in such a way that readers can easily comprehend. Make sure there are no gaps in your points and the audience gets a clear message from your writing.

Don’ts in a Precise:

• Always resist the feeling of copying and pasting from the original passage. Your precis writing won’t hold any value if you do this.

• Precis writing is simply a concise form of an original article, you should not include your views and criticism about a given topic.

• Don’t build any arguments over the original one. Stick yourself to the specific text.

• There must not be any questions in the precis writing. If important, then you can express that by statement.

• Don’t use short forms or abbreviations.

• Don’t be unsteady. This may suggest that you haven’t understood the essence of the passage properly.

Qualities for Writing Good Precis

Though precis writing compressed the length of the original passage it must never be short on quality. It is required to learn what qualities must be present for writing good precis. It must include the following qualities:

Objectivity

Maintaining objectivity is the hallmark of good precis writing. It is a way of not attaching your subjectivity, being biased with the thoughts of the author or simply criticising the arguments of the author. In stricter terms, precis writing must be a summary of the given text.

Clarity

Serving clear and crisp ideas without writing them in depth, is another point to remember. Your precis writing must be clear for your readers, which you can achieve with the use of simple structure and easy language.

Coherence

You can’t afford to miss this quality while writing precis. Coherence means that the points and ideas you have presented must be logical. It interconnects your ideas tightly without leaving any gaps.

Correctness

While writing precis try to avoid mistakes in figures, spelling, grammatical errors, structure and many others. Mistakes would be apparent to readers due to the briefness of the precis writing. Hence, try to provide errorless precis writing to your readers

Conciseness

Conciseness refers to providing compressed information without compromising on its quality. You should focus on important details by eliminating duplication of words and avoiding extra information and useless expressions.

Completeness

While compressing the passage, you cannot leave it incomplete. It must include all the relevant facts and information. Hence, concise precis doesn’t mean that you avoid important information.

Conclusion

Concise precis writing is a handy tool for providing a clear and complete summary of the lengthy passage. Writing a coherent precis is a skill to learn. Students who face issues while writing precis or maybe looking for an additional expert touch can benefit from using an online assignment writing help service. Whether you are writing precis for an article, book or research paper, mastering the art of writing precis will help you save time and effectively present your ideas in fewer words. With the help of our professionals, you can develop a concise, clear, complete and coherent precis.