The Précis

For your first assignment, you will practice writing an academic précis by summarizing either of the readings for Week 4 (‘Method’) – Fernand Braudel’s essay ‘History and Sociology’, and Robert Darnton’s ‘A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order: The City as Text’.

A précis is a formal summary of a text or essay, and, as its name indicates, it requires precision. In preparing to write the piece you should try to identify the most important aspects of the text at hand, and state them as precisely as possible. Is there an overarching argument? Subordinate arguments? How does the text substantiate or support those arguments? What types of evidence does it use (for example: autobiographical anecdotes, historical examples, quotations), and to what effect(s)? And finally, can you identify places where the text is silently doing work, perhaps through the arrangement of evidence; the structure and organization of the paragraphs; the juxtaposition of an anecdote or example, tone and voice; any significant omissions; or by some other means?

Although you will wish to use carefully-selected quotation from the text in question, it is also important to write the précis in your own language. It is easy to get sucked into repeating the language and structure of the text you are précis-ing, but we encourage you to resist this impulse. The true mark of a successful précis is that it not only captures the essence of what the chapter is about, but also indicates that you have achieved a command of the material you are summarizing—both because it is written in your own words and because it anatomizes the text to reveal its structure and mechanics.

 

Style and formatting requirements:

• Length: between 250 and 450 words
• Format: 12-point, double-spaced, Times New Roman
• Student number at top of the page and in document name
• Paragraphs. Use standard-length indents for paragraph breaks. No line breaks. Eliminate the extra spacing that Microsoft Word automatically inserts by going to ‘Format’, then ‘Paragraph’, and tick off the “Don’t add space between paragraphs” box.

 

Please submit your précis by email by 12pm (noon) on Wednesday 1 November 2023.