Precis Writing for American Schools

PrecisWriting

FOR AMERICAN SCHOOLS

UNIVERSITY

OF FLORIDA

LIBRARIES

m^U^J^

From the Library of

John Christie Duncan

COLLEGE LIBRARY

&Lqjl;£>LA/v>-

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2011 with funding from

LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation

http://www.archive.org/details/prciswritingforaOOthur

Precis Writing

FOR AMERICAN SCHOOLS

Precis Writing

FOR AMERICAN SCHOOLS

METHODS OF ABRIDGING, SUMMARIZING
CONDENSING

With Copious Exercises

EDITED BY

SAMUEL THURBER

Newton High School

FOREWORD BY

Charles Swain Thomas

Harvard University

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1936

TS3

C.Z r

COPYRIGHT 1924 BY

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, INC.

Tee Atlantic Monthly Press Publications

are published by

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FOREWORD

During a recent visit to England, where I had the oppor-

tunity of seeing the work in English in many of the best-

known schools of Great Britain, I was greatly interested in the

superior quality of their instruction in composition. As I

studied the various methods by which this superiority is

secured, I became convinced that no small part of it is due to

their fundamental conception in English teaching of making

thought and content basic. In most schools far more atten-

tion is paid to this than to the type of drill which emphasizes

mechanics and perfection of form. And one of the classroom

practices which secures this emphasis upon thought and con-

tent is technically known as precis writing. Practice in precis

writing is there commenced at a comparatively early age and

continued through the upper grades and on through the

universities.

I of course realize that in some of our American schools we

have done work which carries out the same general intent as

that which directs the making of the precis: we have exercises

in abridging, summarizing, abstract-making, and condensation.

Indeed, recent questions of the College Entrance Examination

Board, especially the English Comprehensive Examinations,

have taken the value of this work into strict account. Yet in

practically none of our schools have we pursued this method

systematically; it has all been sporadic, and limited pretty

exclusively to the closing year of the secondary school, when

many of our teachers have centred their attention upon the

drill which prepares their pupils for the college entrance exami-

nations. And certainly in all these efforts we have evolved

no accepted technique for the making of a satisfactory precis.

vi

FOREWORD

In England, on the other hand, the composition courses are

for the most part formulated with the idea that precis writing

is sure to be one of its integral parts. With that conception

dominant, many good British textbooks on precis writing have

been published and are in current use in English classes

throughout Great Britain.

Believing that there is a distinct advantage in such publi-

cations, I wished to see an American book on precis writing,

with exercises suitable to our American schools. As the

General Editor of the Atlantic Texts, I accordingly invited

Mr. Samuel Thurber, an experienced writer and teacher, to

prepare such a volume. The results of his labors are apparent

in Precis Writingfor American Schools. It is offered to teachers

and students in the belief that Mr. Thurber's detailed expla-

nation of precis writing and the numerous exercises which he

has prepared, will provide an efficient means of making readily

available the best methods of precis writing—methods that

not only will increase the student's power in mastering thought

but will perfect his skill in making that thought clearly

articulate.

Charles Swain Thomas

The Graduate School of Education
Harvard University

PREFACE

No questions that face us who teach English in secondary

schools are more important than these: Why is it that our

students think so little when they read? What can we do to

develop in them the habit of reading sentences through to the

end, of weighing and considering the subject in hand, so that

they really understand the thought of a paragraph? What

methods can we employ to discourage that hasty, thought-

less skimming of words which leaves in the minds of youth

neither clear-cut image nor abstract idea?

During my teaching experience with pupils of commercial,

technical, and college-preparatory courses I have found the

making of short, well-constructed summaries one of the most

effective means of training in careful reading and close thinking.

It is now more than twenty years since I began the regular

practice of requiring my students to write out frequently the

gist of paragraphs of prose from Irving, Scott, and Hawthorne

in the lower classes, from Burke, Macaulay, Carlyle, and

Ruskin in the senior year. These summaries were always

short—generally only a sentence or two each; they took but

a few minutes to write and still fewer to read; boys and girls,

I soon found, rather enjoyed writing them; best of all, they

developed, as time went on, a habit of more thorough reading,

and an ability, in some cases, to dig out the central thought of

a passage of fairly stiff prose. Indeed, so valuable did this

practice in the making of summaries seem to me as a young

teacher that I have made it ever since a fundamental part of

viii

PREFACE

the work with all my classes, in the teaching of both literature

and composition.

In this volume I have brought together one hundred and

sixty selections suitable for summarizing—or precis writing—

in American secondary schools. More than half of them I

have used in my own classes, either as we came upon them in

the books we were studying, or as I gave them out in mimeo-

graphed form. They are arranged according to type—narra-

tive, expository, descriptive; and within each section I have

tried to place the passages in the order of their difficulty, the

easier selections in each part coming first. Some of the shorter

paragraphs will be found suitable for ninth-grade pupils,

though the book as a whole is planned for older students,

especially for the upper classes of the senior high school.

I have included in my introduction on precis writing, and

also among the selections that follow, a number of brief sum-

maries written in class by high-school pupils. These, I realize,

are in no way extraordinary. They simply show what boys

and girls of sixteen and seventeen can do, with a little practice,

in the making of short abstracts of simple prose and poetry.

With the exception of some corrections in punctuation and

spelling they are printed here just as they were written.

Several of my colleagues in the English Department of the

Newton High School have generously assisted me in the prepa-

ration of this little volume. To Miss Louise Richardson and

to Mr. Maynard Maxim in particular I wish to express my

gratitude.

I wish also to thank the following publishers for their kind-

ness in granting me permission to use copyrighted material.

The Atlantic Monthly Press: for selections from Ralph

Bergengren, Bruce Bliven, Le Baron Russell Briggs, Chester

Firkins, William T. Foster, John Galsworthy, Robert M. Gay,

Wilfrid W. Gibson, Joseph Husband, F. L. Louriet, Edward S.

PREFACE

lx

Martin, Henry Merwin, William Allan Neilson, Rollo Ogden,

William Lyon Phelps, Agnes Repplier, Edward Ross, Herman

Scheffauer, Ellery Sedgwick, Margaret Sherwood, Simeon

Strunsky, William L. Underwood, Charles R. Walker, Edward

Yeomans.

The Century Company: from Jacob Riis and from Theodore

Roosevelt's The Strenuous Life.

Dodd, Mead & Company: from Lafcadio Hearn.

George H. Doran Company: from Arnold Bennett.

Doubleday, Page & Company: from Luther G. Gulick,

William McFee.

Ginn and Company: from Heloise E. Hersey.

Harcourt, Brace and Company: from H. W. Collingwood.

Harper and Brothers: from George William Curtis, Anthony

Gross,

J. Cotter Morison, Samuel Smiles, Woodrow Wilson.
Houghton Mifflin Company: from Richard C. Cabot,

Calvin Coolidge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Fawcett,

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Laura A. Knott, Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow, Brander Matthews, Nathaniel S. Shaler, Henry D.

Thoreau. These selections are included by permission of and

by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company,

publishers of the works of said authors.

Longmans, Green & Company: from Wendell P. Garrison,

W. E. H. Lecky.

The Macmillan Company: from Samuel S. Drury, Frank W.

Taussig.

Perry Mason Company: from the Youth''s Companion.

G. P. Putnam's Sons: from Arthur C. Benson, Theodore

Roosevelt's American Ideals.

Fleming H. Revell Company: from Newell D. Hillis.

Charles Scribner's Sons: from Horace Bushnell, Max East-

man, James Huneker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Van

Dyke.

X

PREFACE

The Success Publishing Company: from Juliet W. Tompkins.

H. W. Wilson Company: from Edmund and Williams,

Toaster's Handbook.

Yale University Press: from Burton

J. Hendrick's The Age

of Big Business, one of the volumes in "The Chronicles of

America."

Two passages from William James's Talks to Teachers on

Psychology are printed by special permission of Mr. Henry

James of New York.

Samuel Thurber

Newton High School

September, 1924

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction

What Precis Writing Is

3

How To Make a Precis

8

Examples of Precis Writing by High School Students

.

.

12

Precis of Oral Reading

19

Oral Precis

23

Narrative Precis

23

Precis of a Poem

24

Precis of the Sonnet

26

Paragraph-Study

28

Review Questions on Precis Writing

30

Some Books about Precis Writing

33

Selections for Practice in Precis Writing

Narrative Passages

34

Paragraphs of Exposition and Discussion

43

Paragraphs of Exposition and Discussion (longer and more

difficult)

60

Short Descriptive Passages

81

Selections of Two or More Paragraphs

89

Letters

105

Poetry

119

A Group of Sonnets

138

Index

149

PRECIS WRITING

PRECIS WRITING

Its Purpose, Value, and Method, with Examples

from Work of High-School Students