How to write an Executive Summary

A brief section discussed at the beginning of articles, reports and proposals is known as an executive summary. The executive summary is considered as the most important part of the text as it provides a brief review of your document. An executive summary focuses on main points so that the readers can have a look on whole document. Executive summaries are first things to be looked upon by the readers and the last thing written by you.

The format of executive summary

The format of the executive summary will make your work appealing to the readers. Guidelines that need to be followed while writing executive summaries include:

The executive summary must include an attractive commencement that captures the attention of readers.
It should identify the problems and explain the issues to solve them.
The executive summary must provide support and a unique solution to solve the problems.

Guidelines for writing a strong executive summary

You should always start your executive summary with the specifics. Firstly, you need to identify the name of your business or company, its location and the contact information.
You must provide a brief outline of the whole document. It should neither be in detail nor a subsidiary for the original document. Your executive summary must be unique in its own way.
The paragraphs of summary must be short, simple and sensible to entice the attention of the readers.
Use the language that can be easily understood by the target audience. Also, focus on spelling and grammatical errors.
Provide a short description of the main concepts and think about the key strengths to present your ideas.
Organise your main ideas in the form of headings to help the readers get familiar with the summary.
Avoid the use of words like “core competency” or “ground-breaking” since they lose the meaning of the summary.

Steps for writing the best executive summary

After thorough reading of the article, understand what the author is saying and highlight the main ideas.
Start writing the summary by taking various sources of information into consideration. You should write the summary in your own words.
Make use of languages that are easy to remember and appropriate to the study. When you are writing about the arguments of someone else, then make use of the phrases like “as stated by the author” or “the author says”
Read the content thoroughly and check out whether anything important is missing or forgotten. If yes, then you can make additions.
The summary must be presented in the order of events rather than repeating the same points again and bouncing from one point to the other.
At last, check the errors if any, then make the changes accordingly.

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