Alternative idioms to "to put the whole matter into a nutshell"?
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.
- In sum
- In a word
- To sum up
- In short
- Briefly
You can encapsulate the body of the work in a brief summation.