Précis Writing Tips for Bank PO Exam – with Examples
What is a Précis?
‘Précis’ is a French word and it means an abstract or a summary. Writing a précis means making a clever summary of a long passage. Therefore to write a précis, you must have a clear understanding of the passage; and only then will you be able to include all the important (required) points in précis. The basic purpose is to present the core of the document in a clear and concise form, so that it may be easily understood. In the current article, only précis of single passages will be dealt with. Remember précis writing is useful not only as a test, but also as an exercise. Practice in noting and reframing the essential points of an article, will not only increase your power of grasping ideas quickly and precisely, but will also help in the acquisition of a clear, pointed style of expression.
Why is Précis Writing Required for a Bank Exam?
Senior Management Officials expects juniors to be able to provide a brief of what is contained in a mass of documents, reports on a particular topic. They may not have the time to read it completely, but needs to know exactly and quickly what it is all about. Therefore it is valuable to be able to make a verbal précis of a letter or agreement.
Guidelines on Précis Writing
There are 3 types of work to be done for producing a clear and successful précis.
(1) Reading
(2) Writing
(3) Revision
Reading and Selection of Material
(i) At the length required for the précis. This will give you a rough idea of how much of the original has to be left out of the précis.
(ii) Read the original for its general idea. Note down the general idea in one or two sentences. The head or topic sentence will help you to think of a title for the précis.
(iii) Re-read the passage for its detailed meaning. Here you have to work on the meaning and relation of each sentence. If there is anything you do not understand, it is better to leave it out of the precis, but try to find out later what it means. In a good précis, of course, nothing important is left out, but you are certain to get into difficulties if you try to put into a précis something you do not clearly understand.
(iv) Sort out and note down the main ideas of the original. Depending On the length, there will usually be 2, 3 or 4 main ideas. Paragraph in the original will help you – there will usually be one or two main ideas in each paragraph.
(v) Note down any words which are essential. There may be certain technical or precise words in the original which cannot be changed without changing the meaning. There may even be certain phrases of three or four words which cannot conveniently be changed. Usually a stretch of more than four words together is not essential, and therefore should not be used. There is something very wrong with your précis if you find yourself copying out a whole sentence from the original.
Writing Involves Making a Rough Draft
Sometimes more than one and then the final draft of the précis, keeping in mind the following guidelines:
(i) start of your rough précis
(a) Mark on your paper where the end of the précis should come (you should know how many words you write to a line in your normal handwriting).
(b) Divide your paper according to the number of ideas you found when looking for the main ideas.
(ii) You should always make a rough copy of a précis. It takes years of practice before anyone can write a précis at sight.
(iii) Taking each idea in turn, write it out as clearly and simply as possible.
(iv) Put in the connecting words between each section.
(v) Count the number of words you have used.
(vi) See what words can be taken out because they are unnecessary.
(vii) See if any words need to be added to make the meaning more clear. (If you have done your preliminary work properly, you should not need at this stage to look back at the original. You should work only from your notes and read the précis as if it were an essay, looking to see if you have put the ideas down clearly and simply and making sure that you have not jumped violently from one idea to another).
(viii) Check the exact number of words you have used. Try to get the exact number of words asked for. If instructions say ‘Not more than x words’; do NOT write more than that number. The actual number of words you have used will be counted, so you cannot cheat on this.
(ix) Read through your rough copy, making sure:
(a) You have made no mistakes in grammar or syntax.
(b) What you have written makes sense (this is MOST important).
(c) Your précis contains all the main points of the original which you have earlier noted.
(x) Make any necessary alteration in your rough copy. If you have made mistakes in grammar, you may find that your total number of words has changed. You may therefore need to change something somewhere else to keep within your permitted total of words. Now prepare the final draft. Though generally the second draft is the final one, sometimes you may find it necessary to write more than one rough draft.
Revision and Fair Copy
(i) Read through again to make sure that you have not missed anything and make any further alterations, if necessary.
(ii) This stage is so near the end that many people who otherwise would write a good précis make bad mistakes through not checking carefully enough at the final stage.
(iii) Write out your fair copy. Check it through again for grammatical mistakes and spelling errors.
(iv) Check all possible words with the original to make sure that you have got the spelling right.
(v) Always remember never to hurry through a Précis.
Example 1
Little babies are fun; in fact, they are absolutely adorable. I hope this opening statement will absolve me of the guilt the following words are going drown me in. So, babies are sweet little things, but why do most parents the world over make out that their babies are the sweetest? The most common and prodigious phenomenon of nature continues to be the world’s greatest event every time there is a new entry into the parents’ ranks.
Creation is wonderful and there are few who can refute that, but certain laws of nature don’t allow for improvisations and such laws apply to little babies. Every baby, if he is a normal little bounder, just has to cry when his little food bag is empty. There is; nothing particularly intelligent about that, but there are parents who go poetic on this attribute of the little one.
Then comes a stage where a baby just has to roll over on to her stomach periodically. Every baby does it. But try explaining that to a fanatic parent. “Oh but she does it all by herself. It’s just marvellous. You should watch her, you really should. Come on Baby boo, on your stomach”. Much does “Babyboo” care for parental pride at that stage. While the bored parent of four shuffles her feet waiting for the demonstration the new parent is totally engrossed in repeating the request.
After a while Baby seems to oblige but not because she has some Mohammed Ali complex of Pam the Greatest but because her little body wants to. This act is promptly interpreted as the corroboration of the parental statement that Baby is so intelligent and look how she did it on request!
There is something extremely appealing about babies, and little detours in conversation now and then centred on a sudden gurgle or cooing is perfectly normal. What is vexing is one has one’s attention constantly dragged away from some very absorbing discussion to a perpetual refrain of “My baby now…”
Babies, left to themselves are charming creatures; even in their tantrum-prone state. Add a dash of parental pride by all means, but when it increases beyond proportion, the compound is unpalatable. A state of extreme pathos presents itself when an unmarried person visits friends who have just acquired parental status. The new Papa and Mama might be slightly sensitive about fitting into the gushing new mold initially. But when Baby suddenly gurgles and the visiting friend responds impulsively, it is completely out of hand.
Another interesting transformation in many fresh parents is from I-love-babies to I-love-only-my-babies. Two sets of new parents get together and after the cursory chucking of chins of each other’s baby there is a very compulsive game set in motion called i-vaguely-know-you-are-talking-about-your-kid-but-what- I-have-to say-about-mine is far more interesting. It is confounding how the love for babies gets concentrated into a concentric point once one becomes a parent.
There are exceptions to every generality but sometimes one wishes the exceptions would become the generality and vice versa. This would be a nice state of affairs in the meet-my-baby context or should it be contest?
(Vocabulary Aids: Adorable: charming; worthy of love; Prodigious wonderful; enormous. Improvisations: to compose and perform on the spur of the moment and without any preparation. Bounder: a person whose behaviour is ungentlemanly. Detours: a roundabout way; Gurgle: a bubbling or rippling sound in the throat, as a contented baby does. Cooing: make soft murmuring sound. Perpetual: permanent. Refrain : a phrase or verse repeated at intervals in a song or poem. Tantrum-prone: inclined to childish fits of bad temper Pathos : Suffering. Unpalatable: unpleasant or unacceptable to taste).
Analysis with Comments
Para I. Main Point: Babies are a great joy. Supporting Points:
(i) They are adorable (ii) Parents always claim their babies to be the sweetest, (iii) Birth of a baby marks the greatest event in the parents’ lives. !
Para II. Main Point: Babies are a wonderful creation but they are the same everywhere. Supporting Points: (i) They cry in hunger
(ii) Some parents attribute it to their intelligence and become even poetic on the subject.
Para III. Main Point: At a particular stage, every baby rolls on its stomach. Supporting Points: (i) Parents take pride in this activity of their baby, (ii) Parents already having children are not amused by such activities, (iii) The baby’s parents ask it to repeat the action.
Para IV. Main Point: The parents consider their baby intelligent if it repeats the action.
Para V. Main Point: It is very irritating if one’s attention is constantly directed from something interesting to the other’s baby. Supporting Point: Sometimes a reference to a baby’s antics is quite appealing.
Para VI. Main Point: Babies are very charming when left to their own world. Supporting Points: (i) Parents should limit their pride in their babies (ii) An unmarried person does not find himself very happy in the company of new parents.
Para VII. Main Point: Parents love only their own babies.
Para VIII. Main Points: Exceptions are always there. Supporting Point: (i) Exceptions should become the generalities and vice versa.
Precis Title : Babies-Everyone’s Joy?
Babies are a source of great joy and pleasure. They are loved and doted upon by their parents. The birth of a baby is a momentous event in the lives of the parents. Babies are a wonderful creation but are the same everywhere. Hunger makes them cry but the parents consider their baby very interment and tend to become poetical. Every baby rolls on its belly at a certain stage but the parents pride this achievement. The new parents ask their baby to repeat the act while parents already having children do not get amused by such demonstrations. The baby may repeat the act to meet its physical need but the parents attribute it to the baby’s intelligence and understanding. Although the antics of babies are quite enjoyable sometimes, is irritating when an interesting conversation is regularly disturbed by baby talk. Babies should be left to themselves in their own world. The extreme pride of parents in their baby can make a bachelor visitor feel sorry and out of place. Besides, new parents are usually much more fond of their own babies than of others’. But exceptions are always there. The author wishes that exceptions in such cases would become generalities and vice versa. That would be acceptable in the ‘meet my baby context’ or, more appropriately, contest.
Example 2
The most have neglected the careful study of the cinema. When they think of the cinema they think only of sex and immorality, they do not think of the good things about the cinema. Many of them seem to have a closed mind on the subject. They are suffering under a complex, caused by the age-old prejudice of the so called genteel folk towards any kind of show business and the men engaged in it. Even in countries like England and America which are certainly more advanced than India, they look down upon actors and actresses with an air of superiority. The main reason for this prejudice is perhaps that members of this profession always depend on public support and patronage for their very existence. The showman, like a politician, exists only at the pleasure of the public. He is always dispensable, not indispensable. He is always to bow down to the whims and fancies of his public. Here the public becomes superior to the showman and the showman accepts the position of superiority assumed by public men because public men like showmen depend on the same public. If public men work for the good of the public, showmen do, as a matter of fact, work for the pleasure of the public, the two are different spheres of activity. That is all the difference.
Another reason for the inhibited growth of the cinema is the confused thinking about its use, its scope and its purpose. It can be and is, as a matter of fad, to a very large extent, used as a means of propaganda, publicity and advertisement. It can be developed as one of the fine arts in its own right. It can be used as a medium for the enlightenment of other nations about our own culture, customs and manners. It has often been said that one of the potent causes of international misunderstanding, hot and cold wars, is the people of different countries do not have the means to appreciate and understand each other adequately. We are all familiar nowadays with the international exchange of students and professors, permanent culture establishments in foreign countries, tourist information bureaus, and hundreds of good-win missions. There can be no gainsaying that the cumulative effect of all these activities in establishing mutual international understanding and paving the way for permanent world peace is very great. No wonder, therefore, that all modem States consider the film industry as a ‘key’ industry which has to be preserved and fostered at all costs.
The scope of cinema being so wide, and the purpose for which it can be applied so varied, it is obvious that the agencies employing the medium of screen for various specific purposes must also be necessarily as varied. Its use as a medium of advertisement, for instance, can be sponsored only by commercial interest.
Its use as a medium of mass education is pre-eminently the domain of National and State Governments. It is, indeed, a great pity that our educational institutions have not begun to exploit the immense potentiality of the film for educational purposes. A careful consideration of the different agencies which can exploit motion picture for specific purposes leads to the inevitable conclusion that the only scope for private enterprise is the field of public entertainment. I take it that it is agreed on all hands that recreation and entertainment are almost as important as food, clothing and shelter. Apart from recreation, being good of the people themselves, it is in the interest of the State itself to keep the people contented and well provided with wholesome pastimes during the time when they have no work. The idle man’s brain is indeed the devil’s workshop. That is why all successful governments, from time immemorial, have made it a policy of high statecraft to keep the people away from mischief and discontent by means of State-sponsored recreation.
(Vocabulary Aids: Genteel: having or showing the good taste and refinement associated with polite society. Prejudice: a judgment or opinion formed before the facts are known; Indispensable: absolutely necessary)
Analysis with Comments
Para I. Main Point: Leaders and intellectuals have not paid careful attention to the impact of cinema. Supporting Points: (i) They associate cinema only with sex and immorality (ii) Gentry have an old prejudice against actors and actresses who are looked down upon, (iii) Show business is based on public support and patronage, (iv) Whereas public men work for people’s welfare, showmen work for people’s pleasure.
Para II. Main Point: Due to lack of clarity about its use, scope, purpose, cinema has not grown fully; yet, film industry is considered very important for its tremendous impact and role by all modern countries. Supporting Points: (i) It can be very useful in the spheres of education, propaganda, advertisement, publicity.
(ii) It can be a source of enlightenment about different cultures.
(iii) It can bring about better understanding among the peoples of the world and help the cause of world peace.
Para III. Main Point: As the scope of cinema is very wide, the agencies using the medium of cinema must also be varied and cinema as a means of entertainment must be patronized by the state. Supporting Points: (i) Commercial interests sponsor it as a medium of advertisement (ii) It can be used effectively for mass education by national and state governments, (iii) It has great scope for private enterprises in the sphere of public entertainment but the government must ensure healthy recreation and entertainment.
Precis Title : Cinema – Role and Potential
It may be said that public men and intellectuals have not paid careful attention and importance to the influence of cinema. They generally associate cinema with sex and immorality and overlook its advantages. The gentry has an old prejudice against showmen who are not respected mainly because they live on public support and patronage. Both public men and showmen are dependent upon the public. But they differ in their sphere of activity. The former work for public welfare and the latter for public entertainment. Lack of clarity about the purpose, scope and use of cinema has obstructed its growth. Modern countries, however, consider film- industry essential for its tremendous impact and role in different spheres of education, entertainment, propaganda, commerce, in the spreading of culture and even as an art. Cinema can bring about better understanding among the peoples of the world and help the cause of world peace. Its scope is very wide and varied. Hence, the agencies using it as a communication media for specific purposes should be many and varied. Unfortunately, the great potential of cinema for educational purposes remains untapped although its use as a medium of mass education falls in the sphere of the government. The government must patronize cinema and ensure healthy entertainment and recreation for the masses.
I will try to add a few more examples soon.