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Excerpting a Text

Faculties: AC, AMP, AR, BI, BW, D, EFI, IN, MB/VS, SOH, SW, VT, WT

Excerpting is a form of reading notes, often created in a table format. This type of text processing can support your writing process and help you work more efficiently.

Contents

A person reads a book, filters out the most important parts from the pages, and summarizes them in their own words on a sheet of paper.

What is excerpting?

This happens often under a specific question: The goal is to use your own wording to become aware of contradictions, ambiguities, or difficulties in the text. By excerpting, the content is better integrated into your own words.

Excerpting means writing down the key statements of a text.

In addition, excerpts serve to capture knowledge we have developed and to make it available for later steps or future work.

That’s why you should summarize texts in a way that you won’t need to go back to the original text later.

What should I write down when excerpting?

  • Relevant aspects: Does the text interest me? Is it important for my question? Does it match my prior knowledge?
  • Criteria: Title, author, year of publication, table of contents, introduction, conclusion, and bibliography.
  • Questions for the text: What, who, how, why, for what purpose, where, when? Activate your prior knowledge!
  • The rough structure of the text: Be aware of the structure of the work to avoid taking passages out of context.
Create a literature card, ideally in a reference management program such as e.g. Zotero.

What can I excerpt?

  • Basic texts for your own studies
  • Texts that may become important later, e.g. for exams or the final thesis
  • Passages from texts that are particularly important for the current work

Literature: Rost, Friedrich (2013): Reading and understanding scientific texts, In: Franck, Norbert; Stary, Joachim (eds.): The technique of academic work. 17th revised edition. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. p. 65–91.

Frequently asked questions

What does excerpting mean?

When excerpting, you write down the key statements of a text in your own words.

How is an excerpt helpful?

It helps you understand even difficult texts, and the content becomes better integrated into your own words. In addition, the processed knowledge is now available for later work steps.

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Faculties: AC, AMP, AR, BI, BW, D, EFI, IN, MB/VS, SOH, SW, VT, WT

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This article was published in August 2025 and last updated in October 2024.

Faculties: AC, AMP, AR, BI, BW, D, EFI, IN, MB/VS, SOH, SW, VT, WT

Contributors: Maria Noll, Schreibzentrum, Dzifa Vode

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