Summarizing
Summarizing is when you describe or explain the central ideas, themes, or most important information found in a source. You might read a whole 5-page article about an issue, but in your research paper, you just describe the main points of that article in one sentence. Or you read an entire chapter of a book and summarize it in one or two sentences. Summarizing is taking a lot of information and explaining it in as few words as possible. But because you are explaining what you learned from a source, you need to include a citation at the end of the summarizing sentence.
Example
Summarizing an Entire Book
The book, Geek Girl Rising, by Heather Cabot and Samantha Walravens, is the featured example.
In a paper, a summary might look like this in APA style:
In their book Geek Girl Rising, Heather Cabot and Samantha Walravens, highlight success stories of women working in technology and provide inspiration for girls wanting to break into this male-dominated industry (2017).