Summary writer

A summary is a decision about what matters, made on someone else's behalf. The same 30-page report summarizes differently for the executive deciding whether to fund it, the engineer who will implement it, and the student writing about it. So the first question is not "what does it say?" but "who is reading the summary, and what will they do with it?"

Good summaries share a few habits. They lead with the conclusion, not the background. They keep the numbers exactly, because "costs rose sharply" and "costs rose 4%" are different summaries. They keep the caveats that change how much to trust the conclusion. And they say what they left out, so the reader knows when to go to the source.

When to use it