Summary or Conclusion

You probably know that many documents, such as white papers, articles, and proposals, end with summaries or conclusions. But you may not know that summaries and conclusions are different.

A summary does just what its name says: it summarizes your points. For 100-to-200-page pieces, place a summary after each major section. In 25-page white papers, place a summary at the end to remind your reader of key points. Be specific, too, since many readers flip to the summaries and leave the rest for another, neverto-be-seen, day.

Here’s an example of a summary from a contractor’s proposal:

As stated, we can offer your organization three distinct advantages:
1. The job will be finished in only two to three months depending on traffic and weather conditions.
2. . Your bill will be 25% less with our company than with our competitors, since our specialists come from within our organization rather than through outside contracting companies.
3. You’ll receive monthly assessments for two years after the project is complete and can use our free call-in service five days a week if you have questions or concerns.

TRY THIS! Create strong openings and closings for the following documents:
1. You’re writing a ten-page proposal about your recycling program for medium and large organizations, which consists of five steps: determining the most effective recycling plan according to the amount of paper your client uses and its hours of operation; setting up bins in key yet unobtrusive parts of the company; educating the employees about how to recycle and why; picking up the recyclables; billing the client. Your organization gives customers numerous advantages, including a competitive price for services, a flexible program, and 20 years’ experience.
2. You’re writing an information sheet about franchising opportunities for your bicycle shops. The sheet consists of two parts: (1) descriptions of the shops, including how the service area repairs broken bicycles and modifies new bikes, the 15 makes of mountain, racing, and touring bikes, and the apparel section; (2) instructions on how readers can apply for a franchise, which include filling out a complicated form with information about credit history and business experience.
3. You’re writing a report based on an important company meeting, which you’re sending to the parent organization. In the meeting, participants agreed that your organization is understaffed, needs more backing for sales and marketing strategies and training programs, and must offer employees competitive wages. Otherwise, the organization will continue to lose money, offer an inferior product, and eventually collapse.

Conclusions draw a final point based on numerous other points. They must be interesting, important, specific, and tightly connected to the points before them. Seem hard? Not really. Just apply the same principles to your conclusions that you apply to all your writing. Here’s another example from a contractor’s proposal:

Given these conditions, we can complete the job within two weeks for under $4,000-20% less than our competitors.

Beware: if your conclusion contains earth-shattering information, your reader may miss it. As always, play up your strongest points in the opening paragraph and refer to them as you go along.

TRY THIS! For a self-evaluation, write a detailed outline with three sections: your current responsibilities, your strengths, your weaknesses. Then, write the opening and closing paragraphs that give your readers the information you most want them to know and remember.