Summary: Overloaded member

The following information provides guidelines for writing Summary sections for overloaded constructors, operators, and methods.

For overloaded members, docs.microsoft.com creates an overload list page with a general summary as well as individual pages for each overload. The overload list page provides a general summary that applies to all the overloads followed by a table with specific summaries for each overload. (For an example, see the System.TimeSpan constructors page.) To write the general summary and the individual summaries, follow the guidelines in this section.

General summary for an overloaded member

When a class explicitly defines multiple overloads, docs.microsoft.com can display a summary for the entire group of overloads and then a list of the different overloads is listed with the individual summaries. You must write the general summary broadly enough to apply to all the individual overloads. Follow the summary wording guidelines for the particular kind of member you're documenting (for more information, see the relevant subsection in this article), and use text that is programming language-neutral. For an example, see the table in the next section.

Summaries for individual overloads

Provide a separate summary for each individual overload topic in docs.microsoft.com. Use wording that reflects that overload's parameters and distinguishes that overload from the general summary and from the summaries of other overloads. The summary should provide enough information to help users select the overload that they'd like to call.

For example, here's the general summary and individual overload summaries for the overloaded System.IO.BinaryReader.Read method.

General summary (overload list page)	System.IO.BinaryReader.Read	Reads bytes from the underlying stream and advances the current position of the stream.
Individual overload summary	System.IO.BinaryReader.Read ()	Reads characters from the underlying stream and advances the current position of the stream in accordance with the encoding used and the specific character being read from the stream.
Individual overload summary	System.IO.BinaryReader.Read (Byte[], Int32, Int32)	Reads the specified number of bytes from the stream, starting from a specified point in the byte array.
Individual overload summary	System.IO.BinaryReader.Read (Char[], Int32, Int32)	Reads the specified number of characters from the stream, starting from a specified point in the character array.