Précis Writing Tips for SBI Bank PO Exams

Friends, all of you know that SBI has announced its notification for Probationary Officers (PO) recruitment for the year 2013. This exam consists of two sections. 1. Objective Test and 2. Descriptive Test. We've already updated plenty of materials on Objective Section. With a good practice and observation, people can easily do better in Objective Test. So not going to say anything about it now. Lets talk about the Descriptive Section. This section is going to play a crucial role in your final selection of the exam. So, We've planned to give you a complete set of materials on Descriptive Section. This set consists of  the topics Comprehension, Short Précis, Letter writing & Essay. As an initiative of this, today we are starting with short notes on Precis writing. We hope that this surely will help you doing good in upcoming SBI PO Exam's descriptive section .Feel free to use the comments box below if you have any questions / comments... 

Origin of the word Precis : 

The word “précis” (not Precis, but we actually got used to type it in this way.. so no issues....you should pronounce it as pray-see) is cognate to the word “precise” coming from a Latin word meaning “to cut.” It has been variously referred to as  abbreviation’, ‘subtraction’, ‘abstract’, ‘summary’, and ‘condensation’. A precis, then, is a cut version of the original, retaining the main ideas and omitting all or most of the examples and secondary ideas.

What is Précis Writing ?

As we discussed in the above paragraph we can simply say, A precis is a Short Summary. It is not a paraphrase, which merely says in different and simpler words exactly what the passage being paraphrased has to say. A paraphrase may be as long as the passage itself whereas a precis rarely is more than one-third the length of the original selection and may be only one-fourth as long (for bank exams' descriptive section, its advisible to limit your precis to the 1/3rd of the given paragraph. 

A precis gives only the "heart" of a passage. It omits repetition and such details as examples, illustrations and adjectives unless they are of unusual importance. 

A precis is written entirely in the words of the person writing it, not in the words of the original selection. Avoid the temptation of lifting long phrases and whole sentences from the original. It wont help you. And in fact it may lessen your good impression and may lead to less score in the exam. 

As we've already mentioned above, a precis is written from the point of the author whose work is being summarized. Don't begin with such expressions as "The paragraph means" or "The author says".. etc... Just begin as though you were summarizing your own writing.

Now lets have a look at some basic rules you should follow in order to write a good precis.

1. How to write Good Precis for SBI PO Exams ?
2. Approach to Precis Writing
3. Important Techniques to Compress the given data for Precis Writing (important)
4. Precis Writing Examples 

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