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Rhetorical Précis Format

Rhetorical Précis is a method of analyzing text suggested by Margaret K. Woordworth in 1989 1. The format of analysis is based on developing four sentences that focus on the following aspects of the text:

  • In a single coherent sentence give the following:

    • name of the author, title of the work, date in parenthesis;
    • a rhetorically accurate verb (such as "assert," "argue," "deny," "refute," "prove," disprove," "explain," etc.);
    • a that clause containing the major claim (thesis statement) of the work.

  • In a single coherent sentence give an explanation of how the author develops and supports the major claim (thesis statement).

  • In a single coherent sentence give a statement of the author's purpose, followed by an "in order" phrase.

  • In a single coherent sentence give a description of the intended audience and/or the relationship the author establishes with the audience.

Example2

In "The Trouble With Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature"
(1995), the opening essay of the edited collection Uncommon Ground: Rethinking
the Human Place in Nature, renowned environmental historian William Cronon
[Comment: The information about who Cronon is was very easily located at the
end of the article and through a quick internet search.] critiques the romantic
idolization of supposedly untouched, vast wilderness and argues that such a
perspective of wilderness negatively affects humankind's relationship with
nature. Cronon builds a historical case for wilderness as a human construct,
explores the cultural and literary foundations for the belief that wilderness
is a sublime frontier, identifies the problematic paradoxes inherent in this
belief, and outlines the detriments of and possible paradigm–shifting solutions
to this environmental problem. [Comment: One of the challenges of the second
sentence is to decide what not to include. In this case, more could be said
about what those paradoxes and detriments are, but since the focus here is on
the "how" instead of the "what," they have been left out. If those kinds of
unidentified details are important enough, there is room to mention them more
thoroughly in the third sentence.] Cronon opposes the perspective of wilderness
as an idealized, non–human space in order to persuade his readers to live
rightly in relationship to nature and embrace the reality that "home" as a
welcoming, responsibility–requiring place encompasses both "wilderness" and
"civilization." [Comment: Often there is more than one "why," so be on the look
out for this as you actively read.] According to his specific identification,
scholarly presentation, and publication venue, Cronon’s primary audience
includes American environmentalist academics. [Comment: In the later third of
this essay, Cronon uses the pronoun "we" to identify himself and his assumed
readership. Often authors aren’t this useful in helping to identify an
audience.]

Note

The format as well as the length of the summary can and should change for the type of content. For example, when summarizing a dense document with important details, it might be useful to expand onto a few sentences in the format above.

Nonetheless, the summary method forces you to pick out the best and worst of any text you read, and it seems to be successfully adopted in various literature curriculums.

Footnotes

  1. Woodworth, Margaret K. "The Rhetorical Précis." Rhetoric Review, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 156–64. ↩

  2. https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/nonfictionanalysis.html ↩