Comparing Manual vs. Automated Summarization: Pros, Cons, and Best Practices

Writing the summary could be easy or challenging, depending on the content you are dealing with. There are 2 ways to craft summaries of content. You can manually summarize or rely on AI tools for the automated process. Both ways come with their own pros and cons. Moreover, best practices exist to summarize content in both ways.

If you are assigned the task of summarizing a particular piece of content and wondering which method you should choose, it is better to understand the differences between both methods. Understanding the differences between both methods, knowing their pros and cons, and learning best practices will help you figure out which method will suit you. This article compares both summarization methods in detail to resolve your confusion. Reading it will help you learn plenty of useful stuff about manual and automated summarization. Read on to learn more. 

Manual Summarization

This is the conventional way of summarizing content. It requires reviewing the entire text and determining important points in the underlying write-up. Once you finish the content analysis, you will identify multiple sections, sentences, or phrases that look important and should be a part of the summary. It is time to rewrite content while aiming for significantly reduced length in terms of number of words. Finally, you will be able to craft a summary. Here are further details about the process.

Best Practices

While manually crafting a summary of a given write-up, you must remember a few best practices to ensure you create an impeccable summary that serves the purpose perfectly. We have discussed a few of them below.

• Go through the content that should be summarized repeatedly. Reading it repeatedly will help you identify the key points you should cover while writing its summary.
• You may forget the key points while crafting a write-up summary, especially if it is significantly lengthy. Hence, it is always a good idea to jot them down on a separate paper.
• Consider the key points you have jotted down while writing a summary manually. Otherwise, you may miss out on a few key points.
• Instead of picking various sentences from the underlying text and joining them together to formulate a comprehensive yet short piece of content, you should stay flexible and use your creative instinct to craft a summary. 
• Once you have completed the summary you have written manually, you must go through the initial draft repeatedly. Doing so will help you notice weak points and issues.
• Once you have identified the weak points and issues in your manually written summary’s initial draft, it is time for rectification. Write a follow-up version, avoiding all the mistakes you have made while writing the initial draft. Ultimately, you will be able to craft an impeccable summary. 

Pros and Cons

After learning the best practices for manual summarization, it is time to understand its pros and cons. First, we will list some pros of this method and then consider its cons. Read on to learn more. The pros of manual summarization are:

• Manual summarization gives you more flexibility in crafting summaries, as you can incorporate creativity and personal insights.
• It allows you to keep contextual understanding into account as you can consider nuances and particular needs of the target audience while crafting summaries manually.
• Manual summarization leads to desired outcomes because you have full control over the process and can shape summaries according to your preferences.

Some cons of manual processing are:

• Takes significant time and effort.
• Prone to mistakes and biases.
• A tricky task requiring strong comprehension and writing skills.

Automated Summarization

AI, a groundbreaking innovation in the tech world, has led to various advancements, and automated summarization is also one of them. This summarization method works perfectly when you are assigned to summarize lengthy write-ups. You can use an advanced summarizer to perform automated summarization. During this process, a summarizing tool analyzes the input text using machine learning techniques to identify key points. It then uses extractive or abstractive summarization approaches to quickly summarize the underlying text. This process helps users get error-free and highly relatable summaries without including unnecessary information. Further details about automated summarization are given below.

Best Practices

Just like manual summarization, some best practices also exist for automated processes. This section will discuss a few of them. Read on to learn more. 

• You may encounter various tools while searching for a summarizer but opt for an AI-backed summarizing tool to perform automated summarization. Otherwise, you may fail to get your desired summarized output.
• There is no need to use a summarize tool that is compatible with a particular platform or requires installation. Instead, opt for a tool that is accessible through various devices for automated summarization.
• Digging holes in your pockets to get your hands on a text summarizer is not a good approach, especially when you can obtain impeccable summaries using a free summarization tool.
• While the automated summarization process will likely produce comprehensive and accurate summaries, it is still better to go through it once to identify any potential drawbacks.
• If you find a few drawbacks, it is better to resolve them manually instead of going for automated summarization again.

Pros and Cons

Just like manual summarization, the automated process also comes with a few pros and cons; learning them will give you a better idea of which technique suits you better. So here they are.

The pros of automated summarization are:

• The process helps you save plenty of time and effort.
• The process is powered by sophisticated AI algorithms and machine learning mechanisms, leading to objective summarization.
• Users can also use a top-notch summarizer to get customized summaries tailored to their needs.
• Automated summarization leads to the generation of summaries that are free of biases and errors.

A few cons of automated summarization are:

• Minimal chances of generation of inaccurate or incomplete summaries exist.
• Automated summarization relies on extracting highlights from input text and joining them together to generate summaries, which means it lacks creativity and stylistic elements.
• Dependency on internet connectivity is a great issue, especially if you are trying to summarize given content in a remote area.

To Conclude

Summarization is an essential linguistic technique that finds multiple real-life applications. You can do it using two methods: manual and automated summarization. Both techniques are significantly different from each other and come with their own pros and cons. Learning the details of both these methods can help you understand which suits you better in which condition. This article compared both methods in detail. Hopefully, you will like it!