Last updated: November 2019
A rhetorical précis is a type of academic writing where you summarize another piece of text, its main ideas and arguments, in particular, to provide insight into its author’s thesis.
So, it happened again. Your teacher assigned yet another paper to you. It sounds something like “write a précis, in 800-1000 words (approximately four double-spaced pages), of the first two-thirds of ‘Reading: An Intertextual Activity,’ by Robert Scholes. Your precis should cover Scholes’s essay through the top of page 28.”
And we can almost hear you thinking:
What the heck is going on here?
Stand down the panic! This article reveals all the details you need to know for A-worthy precis writing: precis definition, precis format, and precis example for you to understand once and for all what is a precis.
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