Chapter 9
Preparing Abstracts
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding the types of abstracts
Knowing how and when abstracts are used
Much wisdom often goes with fewest words.
—SOPHOCLES, GREEK TRAGEDIAN
You write an abstract to condense the key issues of a longer document. This is similar to the trailer of a movie that helps viewers determine whether they want to see the full feature. You don’t write an abstract for all your documents, only for documents that are very long or highly technical. Abstracts can become critical segments of journal articles, theses, book proposals, grant applications, and more. Keywords are important because online databases use abstracts to make it easier for people to research a particular subject or find a body of work.
An abstract is a subset of an entire document, so you can’t write it before you complete the document.
Types of Abstracts
There are a five types of abstracts: descriptive, evaluative, critical, highlight, and informative. I discuss descriptive, evaluative, critical, and highlight abstracts briefly and informative abstracts in greater detail because they’re most commonly used and have a more widespread purpose.
- Descriptive abstracts: In about ...
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