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Stop 7 of 13

Shorten something long

You will be able to get the gist of anything long in under a minute, and you will know what a summary quietly throws away.

Read the long one afterwards and notice what it decided you did not need. That is the whole lesson, and it takes about two minutes.

Do this

  1. Find something genuinely too long. The email from the homeowners association. A news article. The newsletter you have not opened.
  2. Copy it, paste it in, and ask: What does this say? Five sentences.
  3. Read the summary. Then, and this is the part people skip, read the original.
  4. Ask yourself what got left out. Then ask it directly: What did you leave out of that summary?

Watch it done first, if you would rather

Let my human assistant John show you what that looks like. He does the same thing you are about to do, at the same speed, with nothing edited out.

Filming This one is not recorded yet. Everything you need is written out above, and the video will appear here when it is ready.

What just happened

The summary was good, and something was still missing. There always is. Shortening means deciding what matters, and it made those decisions without knowing you.

Usually what goes first is the thing only relevant to some readers. The date buried in paragraph nine. The exception that happens to apply to you. Summaries are excellent at the main point and unreliable about the detail that concerns you personally.

So the practical rule is about stakes, not length. Summarize the newsletter and never read the original. Summarize the letter about your roof, then read the original.

Asking what it left out works surprisingly well, and it is a good habit to keep.

If something did not go as expected

It is too long to paste in.
Paste it in two or three pieces, saying part one of three, do not answer yet as you go. Then ask for the summary at the end.
The summary included something that is not in the original.
It happens, and it is the same failure you will meet head on at stop 8. Ask it to quote the exact sentence it got that from. If it cannot, it was invented.
Can I do this with a PDF?
Usually yes. Attach it the same way you would a photo. Very long or scanned PDFs are less reliable.

The view from here: What a summary quietly leaves out