phrase requests - Alternative idioms to "to put the whole matter into a nutshell"?


I need some alternatives to introduce summarization on the final paragraph of non-technical chapters or longer blog articles. Known terms like summary often sound a bit technical to me...



Answer



A few more examples, some of which are highly informal:



  • The short version is ...

  • Essentially, ...

  • In essence, ...

  • To make a long story short, ...

  • The point [to take away from this] is ...

  • In review: ... (esp. before organized text, like a bulleted list)

  • So, what do we know? ... (good for writing that is educational or technical, but also informal)


Edit:



  • To recap, ...

  • To rehash: ...

  • To wrap things up, ...

  • So, going back over [the main points] ...

  • Looking at what we've covered [so far] ...

  • [At this point,] we have established that ...


The wordier ones can obviously be varied: "Going back over ..." could just as easily be "Let's go back over ..." or "Now, to go back over ..." and so on. It all depends on how formal, personal, and serious you want to be.


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