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Critical précis

Written work summarising the main ideas and arguments of a longer text

Summary

Written work summarising the main ideas and arguments of a longer text

A critical précis, or sometimes rhetorical précis, is a short work written in an expository style similar to an essay. It summarises all the main ideas, arguments, and abstractions from longer text. The purpose of a critical précis is to make the original author's thesis more accessible by allowing readers to skip non-essential components of the original work. The writers of précis avoid copying directly from the original text—excepting cited quotations—to avoid academic plagiarism.

Précis creation is commonly assigned in humanities and liberal arts classes. Typical lengths are less than 500 to 1500 words.

Structure

;Introduction

;Body

;Conclusion

The précis is written from an impartial third-person point of view, although personal analysis of a text can also be considered précis format. The analysis of ideas is usually in chronological order.

Example keywords

The opening paragraph follows a certain structure: ...the author...

:::followed by a clause explaining the thesis. This clause is typically similar in scope to the concluding sentence of the final paragraph. These words exemplify the use of *rhetorically accurate verbs*. ## References ## References 1. Seiferth, Michael S.. ["Writing the Precis"](http://lonestar.texas.net/~mseifert/precis1302.html). *English 1302 - Palo Alto College*. 2. Lanzbom, Leon. ["On English and Writing: Critical Thinking"](http://www.lanzbom.org/criticalthinking.htm). *Word Rogues*. ::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_précis) and is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the [article history page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_précis?action=history). ::

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