Abstracting

A table of contents or summary is an overview of the essential content of a text or film. Common forms of tables of contents are the table of contents, the abstract and other forms of documentary papers. The English term summary is also common in scientific papers. The table of contents is standardised in the DIN standard DIN 1426.

As a coherent text (not in indent or list form), the content statement is also an important form of writing in school. In contrast to a view oriented towards product norms (cf. above), however, the reproduction of content in school, especially in German lessons, is to be seen in a process-oriented and functional way: Similar to the retelling, but with other linguistic means and in a more concise form, in the content statement texts that are to be understood and discussed are to be "reformulated". This requires a cognitive as well as a linguistic performance, the independence of which is often underestimated: The summary is one of the most demanding formats of written performance assessment.

In contrast to a résumé or a conclusion or a review, a synopsis - from a normative point of view - should not contain any interpretations or evaluations. In contrast to retellings, synopses should also not contain any suspense arcs. Furthermore, there must be no verbatim speech. These normative requirements are contradicted by an analysis of synopses from a didactic perspective, as Abraham, for example, undertakes: According to this, a synopsis is "never 'objectively neutral'. It always evaluates"; moreover, it always contains "implicit offers of interpretation".

Synopses are usually written in the present tense, or in the perfect tense in the case of antecedent tense. Since tables of contents are shorter than the original text, they must inevitably omit parts of the content. They can serve as a means of subject indexing. The table of contents of a book, a dissertation or the like is usually half a page to one page in length. It should present the most important results and methods used in general (not too specific) technical language.

In the school summary, the actual main section is preceded by a basic sentence that states the topic, i.e. not the actual content of the text, but what the author is concerned with. The main part is followed by a short conclusion, a summary, in which, unlike the main part, an evaluation is not only allowed, but desired.

Synopses of motion pictures are also called synopses.

See also

• Epitome (extract) (short extract from a more extensive work)
• Content notice (explanations on the admissibility of content notices under copyright law)
• Précis
• Text interpretation
• Encyclopedia (summary of all knowledge)
• didactic reduction (method of simplifying and reducing a complex reality)