To make sure that a target audience should understand the essential message and ideas, one must make sure that an appropriate style of writing is chosen. Although analysis and a description of a particular piece might seem similar, there is a significant gap between them. By focusing on the unique characteristics of each, one will be able to improve one’s writing abilities and, therefore, the skills of communication extensively. By considering the differences between analysis and a summary, one will be able to identify the goals of their writing and the means for reaching them precisely. While seemingly similar to a description or a summary, analysis implies that a correlation between particular elements should be identified, whereas a summary or a description provides a concise overview of the key data.
Content: Differences
As stressed above, the elements of analysis are quite different from those of a summary. For example, a summary may include the items such as “background,” “important stakeholders,” “key elements,” “conclusion,” etc. Analysis, in turn, may incorporate the parts such as “introduction” and “conclusion,” yet it will also have a part examining the relationships between the key elements, e.g., “effects of the variables on each other.” The emphasis on interactions between the crucial elements and items as opposed to their description is what sets analysis apart from a summary and description.
Furthermore, a summary or a description is likely to include the characteristics of the items mentioned above. The specified attribute is especially characteristic of a description, in which adjectives and adverbs are used extensively to denote the qualities and properties of the described items (e.g., “red,” “bright,” “loud,” etc.). While the inclusion of such characteristics into the analysis is allowed, it is not obligatory and, therefore, rather rare unless a qualitative analysis implying the description of variables is used (“Difference between analysis and summary,” 2017). Therefore, there are significant differences in the content of the analysis and summary.
Strategies: Differences
The tools used in analysis and description or summary are quite different as well. For example, a comparison is often utilized during analysis so that the relationships between the key variables could be defined and measured. A description or summary traditionally implies using narrative techniques.
Purpose: Differences
Finally, the purposes of the two genres are entirely different. While a summary or a description is aimed at introducing the target audience to key ideas, concepts, or characteristics of a particular object, person, or phenomenon, the analysis focuses on determining the relationships between specific variables. For example, an analysis of the effects that social media has on people’s behavior will provide the cause-and-effect connection between social networks and the behaviors of its participants. A summary of the identified problem, however, may vary in its content, yet it will never produce unique observations of the phenomena; instead, it will offer an observation of the key behaviors, the social media tools that are used most commonly, the characteristics of the participants, etc. Therefore, the purpose of a summary or a description is to summarize and describe, whereas analysis helps delineate crucial links between objects, people, and observed phenomena.
Conclusion
The primary difference between a summary and analysis concerns the purpose and the choice of tools for implementing it. Requiring further identification of the links between variables, analysis often demands a comparison, whereas a summary or description suggests that observed phenomena should not be evaluated and should be characterized qualitatively, instead.
References
Difference between analysis and summary. (2017). Web.