A prÉcis is the essence of a longer story of any kind. You take your story and ‘boil it down’, so as to get rid of all the parts that do not really matter; you then collect what is left, and put these points together in a short concise ‘summary’. But the result must not be a ‘list’ of important points, or a series of ‘jottings’. It must be the same story told clearly and readably, in a very much condensed form.

For instance, you may have to make a prÉcis of a long pile of letters dealing with some particular subject; or perhaps the account of a trial; or a long report written by one individual. It doesn’t matter what the longer ‘story’ is. What you have to do is to read it through, extract all the parts that matter, and put them down in readable form.

The Object of these Exercises

Now prÉcis writing is unlike free English composition. It is much more exact and scientific; and it must be written according to certain definite rules. It is no use trying to learn all the rules at once; you will learn them one by one, and without trouble, as you work through the following exercises.

These exercises are not the real Government Blue Books, reports, trials, &c., that you will have to tackle later on. They are all ‘made up’. But they are exactly like the real thing. The only difference is that they are much easier and shorter—and they are not so dull. And as they are the same sort of thing on a small scale, you should be able to deal with the real ones later on when you meet them.

How to tackle a PrÉcis

All prÉcis, whether easy or difficult, should be tackled in the same way. First read the whole thing through very carefully without writing any notes or underlining any passages.

All depends on this first reading. For if you once get into the way of writing your prÉcis or even making notes ‘as you go along’, you will never grasp the subject as a whole. And the result will be that your prÉcis will lack balance. Either you will write too much about the first half and skimp the rest, or you will write a great deal about the picturesque points that appeal to you, and leave out things that really matter.

When you have read it carefully through, and got the whole story in your mind, run through it quickly a second time marking the passages you mean to use. For the purposes of this book the best plan will be to underline in pencil those passages which will have to be used with little alteration, and to put a wavy line against those which cannot be left out altogether, but must be greatly condensed.

Last, work up all the marked passages into a short continuous ‘story’.

Rule I.—Start your PrÉcis with a title.

This title must not be of the imaginative kind that would suit a story, such as ‘A Misunderstanding’, or ‘The Adventures of a Red Cross Man’. It must be a clear and concise statement of what the prÉcis is about. Thus: “PrÉcis of the correspondence between the British Government and Dr. Wilson, President of the United States, concerning contraband of war”. And if dates are given you should add, “between Feb. 18, 1915, and Oct., 1916”.

Rule II.—Every PrÉcis must be written in the form of REPORTED SPEECH.

This rule is so important that it is impossible to write a prÉcis till it is thoroughly understood. It will be necessary to explain what is meant by ‘reported speech’, and to practise a few examples.

“Reported Speech”

Suppose you say to somebody, “I can’t be bothered, as I am busy writing a prÉcis!” you are using a form which is called Direct speech. And suppose the person you were addressing goes away and says to somebody else, “So-and-so said he couldn’t be bothered, as he was busy writing a prÉcis”, he is reporting what you said. In other words, he has turned your ‘direct speech’ into ‘reported speech’.

Notice what has happened. You are no longer the person speaking, but the person spoken about: therefore ‘I’ becomes ‘he’. Also you are no longer speaking: what you said is now ‘in the past’; therefore ‘can’t’ becomes ‘could not’ and ‘am’ becomes ‘was’.

This is quite straightforward. The difficulty arises when you are dealing with words that imply future time. Without going into the syntax, one may just explain that in Reported speech the ‘future’ must be referred back to the time at which the Direct statement was spoken. Thus: “I will write when I get home”, becomes “He said that he would write when he got home”.

Thus for the purposes of simple prÉcis writing the following rules must be observed:—

(a) Never use the First or Second persons: always the Third.

(b) Never use the Present tense: always the Past.

(c) Never use the Future tense: always refer it back to the past. Even a verb such as ‘must’, which usually implies the future, should be changed to ‘would have to’, or some such phrase.

(d) Possessive adjectives, my, your, our, must be changed to the Third person.

(e) Adverbs and adverbial phrases must be changed in the same way. ‘Now’ becomes ‘then’; ‘at the present time’ becomes ‘at that time’; ‘here’ becomes ‘there’, and so on.

Take one more example. You know this familiar quotation: “I will arise and go to my Father, and say unto Him, ‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son’”.

Now suppose you were telling the story of the Prodigal Son to a Japanese gentleman, or somebody who had not heard it before, and you wished to keep pretty close to the original, you might put it in this way: “The prodigal son then determined that he would arise and go to his Father, and confess that he had sinned before Him and against Heaven, and was no more worthy to be called His son”.

Compare these two forms, and note all the differences.