Thinking about Abstracts

Every research paper's abstract briefly tells its story. Unfortunately, many writers produce a poor abstract, often in part looking like a table of contents, thereby lessening the chance of getting the research published and weakening its eventual impact too. This missive will help you improve your abstract reading and writing skills. First, you will reverse engineer an existing abstract, succinctly stating each abstract sentence's purpose. By repeating this exercise you will see storyline patterns, and be able to determine why you like or dislike an abstract. Second, you will polish an abstract so if fits into the publishing venue's word and perhaps sentence limits. While improving your conception of abstracts is useful, your ultimate goal is to readily write an abstract mimicking the style and storyline of other abstracts written for your audience, and employing a sensible level of detail, thereby gaining that audience's approval. As with learning any skill, you must thoughtfully practice, but it is worth the effort.