Key Takeaways | Meaning & How to Write

Knowing how to write key takeaways enables you to capture the most important points from a talk, presentation, or meeting to share with others—helping to reinforce understanding, support decision-making, and ensure your main messages land.

Key takeaways meaning

Key takeaways are the most important points or insights to remember, reflect on, or act upon after engaging in an exchange of information or ideas—such as attending a meeting, listening to a talk or presentation, or reading a text for research or study purposes.

The term key takeaway typically refers to a written summary of these points for sharing with participants—in meeting minutes or on a presentation slide, for example. It may also refer to notes someone writes for themself to record the key points from their own perspective.

How to write key takeaways

Key takeaways concisely summarize the main points of interactions such as meetings, conference talks, sales presentations, and webinars. Less is more when writing key takeaways, so try and limit it to the three to five main points that you want the participants to remember or act upon.

These are some common features of key takeaways:

• Written in note form rather than full sentences to keep them concise and scannable
• Formatted as bullet points or a numbered list for easy reading and reference
• Include bolded keywords or phrases to emphasize the most important concepts
• Focus on outcomes, insights, or next steps, not just facts or observations

Key takeaways for a meeting example

Here are some example key takeaways from the minutes of an internal company meeting relating to a specific agenda item: evaluating the company’s participation in Clean 2025, a trade convention for the cleaning products industry.

Key takeaways slide example

Here’s an example key takeaways slide from a college student’s presentation on the current status of solar energy adoption worldwide.

Frequently asked questions about how to write key takeaways

What is a synonym for key takeaways?

Synonyms for key takeaways include:

• Main points
• Core insights
• Important conclusions
• Lessons learned
• Essential findings

Use QuillBot’s free Summarizer tool to help you extract key takeaways from a text.

Is it takeaway or take away?

It can be takeaway or take away, depending on the grammatical context.

The spelling is “takeaway” (one word) for the noun meaning “an important insight” (e.g., “I added a key takeaways slide to my presentation”).

However, the spelling is “take away” (two words) when it’s a phrasal verb (e.g., “What are the most important insights that the participants should take away from the workshop?” or “You’re not allowed gum; the teacher will take it away if they see it”).

QuillBot’s free Grammar Checker will tell you instantly if “takeaway” or “take away” is correct.