A summary can contain no obviously false sentence and still leave its reader with the wrong impression. The missing part may be a condition, an exception or the simple fact that a decision has not been made.
That makes summary review a coverage problem as well as a fact-checking problem. Instead of asking only whether each sentence sounds right, ask which details the reader needs to make the intended decision.
Define the job before shortening the source
A summary for someone deciding whether to approve a launch needs different details from a summary for someone drafting a newsletter. State the audience, purpose and required fields before generating the text. If the purpose changes, the earlier summary may no longer be adequate.
Useful fields might include decisions, owners, deadlines, dependencies, exceptions and open questions. Do not require all of them for every document. Choose the ones that matter to the actual task, then keep an explicit “not stated” option.
A short fictional memo
The pilot is planned for Thursday, subject to security approval. Lina owns the approval request. The accessibility review is complete. The pilot includes the internal support team only; customer accounts are excluded. No final launch date has been agreed. The team will revisit the budget after the pilot.
Now consider this summary: “The accessibility review is complete, and the pilot is planned for Thursday. The team will revisit the budget afterward.” Every sentence resembles something in the memo. Yet the summary drops the approval dependency, the owner, the audience restriction and the unresolved launch date.
A reader could mistake a conditional internal pilot for a confirmed customer rollout. The problem is not a fabricated number; it is missing context.
Review coverage against the source
| Decision-relevant detail | What the memo says | What the review should preserve |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | Thursday is conditional | The approval dependency |
| Ownership | Lina requests approval | A named owner, if appropriate to share |
| Scope | Internal support team only | The customer-account exclusion |
| Uncertainty | No final launch date | An unresolved item rather than an invented date |
A stronger summary would say that the internal support pilot is planned for Thursday if security approval is obtained, with Lina handling that request; customer accounts are excluded and the launch date remains undecided. Budget review follows the pilot. That wording is an illustrative revision, not a benchmark result.
Keep negation and conditions attached to the claim
Words such as unless, pending, only and not can carry more decision value than a paragraph of background. When compressing text, check whether removing one changes what the reader is allowed to conclude.
Also look at where a condition appears. A caution in a footnote may limit a finding in the main text. A later revision may replace an earlier date. If the source is a long report, inspect the relevant section rather than relying on a list of keywords.
Distinguish three kinds of review
Support: does each summary claim follow from the source? Coverage: are the important source details represented? Usefulness: does the result serve the intended reader? A summary can pass one check and fail another.
NIST’s Generative AI Profile discusses confidently erroneous content and information-integrity risks. The coverage worksheet here is our editorial method for one practical workflow; it is not a NIST-endorsed score or a validated safety test.
Do not ask the same question repeatedly
“Are you sure?” may produce another confident answer without adding evidence. Give the reviewer a concrete task instead: list the source’s unresolved decisions, compare those with the summary, and identify anything missing. Then inspect that comparison against the original material.
For consequential work, make a qualified person responsible for the final review. Keep the source version and the edited summary together, with suitable access controls for private documents.
Use the citation-checking worksheet for individual factual claims. When a required detail is absent from the source itself, the right next step may be an explicit unresolved state, rather than a more polished summary.
AI-generated conceptual illustration. The memo and all named participants in it are fictional.
