The idea of a “synthesis” in writing can seem abstract, so it’s important to conceptualize it in a way that’s easy to grasp. Michigan State University provides examples of synthesis in everyday life: “It follows that your ability to write syntheses depends on your ability to infer relationships among sources—essays, articles, fiction, and also nonwritten sources, such as lectures, interviews, observations. This process is nothing new for you, since you infer relationships all the time—say, between something you’ve read in the newspaper and something you've seen for yourself … In fact, if you’ve written research papers, you’ve already written syntheses. In an academic synthesis, you make explicit the relationships that you have inferred among separate sources.”
