The document discusses the concept of precis writing, which is a concise summary that distills the main ideas of a passage while retaining key information. It outlines steps for extracting main ideas, including reading headings, topic sentences, conclusions, and identifying the purpose of the text. The document also provides guidelines for planning and writing a precis, emphasizing the importance of clarity, brevity, and adherence to the original text without personalization.

1. Precis Writing

2. Definition of Precis [PREY-SEE]
• A short summary of a passage
• About one-third the length of the original passage
• Purpose: to provide a gist of the ideas to someone, who has not read the original
passage
• Very useful in:
✓Legal drafting [ where a student has to summarize upon a judgement]
✓Academic reading [ where, a student has to summarize, on won words, a passage
or chapter in a book, in order to understand it]

3. Why is precis a skill?
It tests your ability to:
✓Collect important information from a passage
✓Express your understanding in your own words
✓Use vocabulary to shorten the number of words.

4. 1. Heading
2. Topic Sentence
3. Conclusion
4. Repetitions
5. Purpose of the passage

5. Steps to extract main ideas from a passage
1. Read the Heading
In case you are reading an essay, the entire passage will be divided into
sub-parts, each dealing with one idea. Each of that part will have a
heading, that reflects that idea.
2. Read the topic sentence
If you are just reading a large paragraph, just locate the topic sentence.
All other sentences will be details and examples of that topic-sentence
idea. [if you get a text in exam, which has 3-4 paragraphs, just extract
topic sentences from each. Those 3-4 lines are good for precis]

6. Title hints this passage is
about:
1. Animals
2. Growing

8. Steps to extract main ideas from a passage
3. Read the conclusion
• A conclusion will always have a re-statement of the topic sentence.
So, to confirm whether you got the main idea, just look into the
conclusion.
• Conclusion-line also confirms the attitude of the author: positive or
negative, towards a topic.

9. 84 Words
Precis:
Different animals grow in
fascinatingly different ways.
Some, like humans, grow
gradually. Some, like frogs,
grow abruptly. Some, like
butterflies, grow is stages.
[23 words]

10. Steps to extract main ideas from a passage
4. Locate repetitions to get main-idea
• Mark out the words / ideas are repeated in the paragraph.
• Logically, any point, that a writer wants to develop, will be repeated 2-3 times.
• Each repeat will have an example; or a new fact; or, category [first..second..third]
This method is helpful, if you do not have a topic sentence, conclusion or heading.

11. Water
Specific location:
Water in Beach
Away from people;
Friends
Precis: Clare spent peaceful
moments alone, on the beach,
thinking of her friends at work.
[13 words]
72 WORDS

12. Steps to extract main ideas from a passage
5. Locate the purpose of the passage. Any passage is mainly of 3 purposes:
✓To inform
✓To Instruct
✓To persuade
• When you locate the purpose, it could prove crucial to pack the meaning of a lot
of words.
Eg.: description of an event; a place; a person; history. Eg.: Indian Freedom movement; an
episode of Mahatma Gandhi’s life. Tsunami. A nice / bad experience faced by a person.
It mainly feels like ‘Wikipedia data’ or a ‘nice story’
Eg.: Moral passages, that tell us do’s and don’ts in life. Eg.: We should obey the law. Take
care of our parents. Treat animals kindly, etc.
Debate-passages, that will give opinion about a topic. The writer wants to convince you
to think positively or negatively about that topic.
Eg.: Whether social media is good or bad..

13. Planning a precis
1. Start on a rough space.
2. Write the main idea
3. Find the key-words in the text, and jot it down.
[Key words are the points on which the main idea is developed]
4. Try writing the main idea, and the key-word info. in your own words.

14. Planning a precis
5. Once finished, check:
✓You have all the keywords in the passage
✓You have NOT added anything—a data, an example, etc of your own. Every thing should
come from the passage only.

15. Planning a precis
6. Count words. It should be one-third of the total word count.
7. If you have greater word-count, reduce your first draft. Re-frame sentences.
8. Once it is of one-third word count, copy it to the main area in your answer sheet.
9. Finally, re-read to check grammatical and spelling errors.

16. Let’s attempt some precis

17. Repeat-words: Distance
education
Key words: degree while
doing job. Poor students ,
college in another city.
alternative
Purpose: to persuade. The
author wants to convince us,
distance education is good.

18. Precis:
Distance education is an alternative to college education, if you have a job, or cannot
afford leaving your city. [16 words]
Re-try: Distance-education is good for students who are on-job, or poor.[11 words]
Word-count: 44 words. Target: 14 words
We can write this, coz
we know the author is
trying to convince us the
positives of distance
education

19. Paragraph with purpose: To Inform

20. Title: Virus Surge;
Health service in India;
Beleagured
Topic Sentence: explosion
in Coronavirus cases
Topic sentence: PM wars
community transmission started.
Topic sentence: Experts
fear on certain areas

21. Topic Sentences

22. First Draft
The author reports India is preparing for a surge in Coronavirus cases.
PM has cancelled foreign trips, public festivities; shut schools; stopped
drug-exports.
Health-care providers a worried on the following grounds: not enough
hospitals, with a patient to bed ratio at 1844:1; inequality in healthcare
at places of shortage of clean water; dense population makes social
distancing ineffective; lack of pharmaceutical ingredients to make
drugs, as China-imports are halted.

23. Second draft [63 words]
The author reports that with rise in Coronavirus cases, India has adopted preventive
measures, like shutting schools, social distancing, stopping imports and exports. However,
health-care providers think these measures to be insufficient because:
1. Adverse patient: hospital bed ratio, at 1,844:1
2. Lack of overall access to clean water supply in country.
3. Social distancing is ineffective in densely populated areas
4. India doesn’t have drug ingredients due to halt in supply-line from China.
Foreign trade
3rd edit: Ineffective social-distancing in densely populated areas
3rd edit: India lacks in drug-manufacturing, as the Chinese supply-line is halted
Use punctuations
to give stats and
data in a short
way.

24. Paragraph with Purpose: to instruct / moralize

25. Topic Sentence:
imp. Of rights
and duties
Topic Sentence:
Neglect duties;
demand rights
Keywords:
Rights for self-
development;
duties for
Nations’
development.
Complain of
right denial.
Destroy public
property; Cause
losses to govt.

26. Conclusion
Topic sentence
Keywords: not
perform duties.
Pay taxes; submit
bills; attack
women in name
of traditional
culture.
Traditional
culture :
Honesty; truth,
respect elders

27. First Draft
• The author thinks that rights and duties go hand-in-hand.
• Rights ensure self-development
• Duties ensure development of others.
• We complain of not getting rights
• We neglect duties, like damaging public property while protesting; thus
causing huge loss for the government.
• Other neglect of duties include non-payment of taxes; telephone bills;
attacking on women in name of traditional culture.
• Tradition is to respect others, and be honest.
• We should do our duties carefully, just like we ask for our rights.

28. Second draft [49 words]
The author justifies the necessity of doing duties, side by side of asking
for rights. Rights ensure self-development. Duties ensure development
of others and the nation. We should not damage public properties; pay
our taxes and telephone bills on time; respect women and elders; be
honest and truthful. We should be careful both of our duties and rights.
timely
Compound
word = 1
word

29. Paragraph with purpose: To Persuade

30. Purpose: to persuade
reader of Zoom’s
benefits
Topic Sentence
Key words:
Webinar; user
friendly; record
webinars; transcripts
of webinars;
advanced features for
interactive meetings;
40 minutes for free
sessions; lack of
security

31. First draft
• Zoom is good for webinars for the following reasons:
• It is user friendly for non-technical people
• It records a webinar, and saves it in local hard drives.
• It generates transcripts of webinars, which could be used later for
books and articles.
• It has advanced features for interactive sessions.
• Some drawbacks are: 40 minute time-limit for meetings in free
version; weak security because of non-encrypted communication.
• For good webinars that are non-confidential, one should use paid
Zoom services and proper security settings. [76 words]

32. Second Draft: Target: 62 words
Zoom is good for webinars, because it is user friendly; records and saves
meetings; generates transcripts for future use; has advanced features for
interactive meetings. The two drawbacks, namely time-limitations on free
versions, and weak security, can be by-passed by using paid versions,
adjusting security settings, and avoiding confidential data. [47 words]
40 minute time-limitations for meetings in free version
weak security
because of non-encrypted communication New phrase added.
user friendly for non-technical people
records a webinar, and saves it in local hard drives.
generates transcripts of webinars, which could be used later for future use
We know this is what
the author wants: to de-
focus the negatives, and
Focus the positives of
Zoom. Than can be
done, only by giving
steps to By-pass the
negatives