Basically, you don’t want to just summarize in your paper. You want to add commentary to make it more original and dynamic. A summary might be “In the first chapter, the author said that dogs and cats don’t live well together. Then in the second chapter…” A commentary includes your perspective and might be something like, “The author says that dogs and cats don’t live well together but I know plenty of people who own both dogs and cats and they get along just fine.” In the second example, you’re adding to the content in the book with your own perspective, experience, etc. I hope that helps!

Absolutely, Dulce! 🙂 I’m so glad that you find it useful!

Do you mean this sentence: “In this clever and satirical scene from the 2004 movie Shaun of the Dead, Shaun (played by Simon Pegg) wakes up with a hangover and walks to the convenience store to buy a soda and an ice cream”?

You’re right that it’s almost a summary — what sets it apart is the “clever and satirical” phrase, since that inserts an opinion 🙂

Hi Jade,

The difference can be really confusing. When you use commentary, you’re often adding an opinion or evaluation — not *just* stating what is going on in the quotation. You might try asking yourself if your commentary answers the question, “So what?” So if you write “In this quotation, [author] is describing [X],” and you ask yourself “So what?”, you might realize that you can add on to this sentence with something like: “…which is important because [reason 1] and [reason 2].” Then you’re not only saying what is happening in the quotation (summarizing), but you’re showing the larger significance of what is happening — that’s what commentary is for 🙂

Happy writing!
Erin

Awesome! Glad it helped you and thanks for sharing. 🙂