ABTRACT WRITING

This handout provides definitions and examples of
the two main types of abstracts: descriptive and
informative. It also provides guidelines for
constructing an abstract and general tips for you to
keep in mind when drafting. Finally, it includes a
few examples of abstracts broken down into their
component parts.
An abstract is a self-contained, short, and powerful
statement that describes a larger work.
Components vary according to discipline. An
abstract of a social science or scientific work may
contain the scope, purpose, results, and contents
of the work. An abstract of a humanities work may
contain the thesis, background, and conclusion of
the larger work. An abstract is not a review, nor
does it evaluate the work being abstracted. While it
contains key words found in the larger work, the
abstract is an original document rather than an
excerpted passage.
You may write an abstract for various reasons.
The two most important are selection and
indexing. Abstracts allow readers who may be
interested in a longer work to quickly decide
whether it is worth their time to read it. Also, many
online databases use abstracts to index larger
works. Therefore, abstracts should contain
keywords and phrases that allow for easy
searching.
Selection
Say you are beginning a research project on how
Brazilian newspapers helped Brazil’s ultra-liberal
president Luiz Ignácio da Silva wrest power from
the traditional, conservative power base. A good
first place to start your research is to search
Dissertation Abstracts International for all
dissertations that deal with the interaction between
newspapers and politics. “Newspapers and
politics” returned 569 hits. A more selective
search of “newspapers and Brazil” returned 22 hits.
That is still a fair number of dissertations. Titles
can sometimes help winnow the field, but many
titles are not very descriptive. For example, one
dissertation is titled “Rhetoric and Riot in Rio de
Janeiro.” It is unclear from the title what this
dissertation has to do with newspapers in Brazil.
One option would be to download or order the
entire dissertation on the chance that it might
speak specifically to the topic. A better option is to
read the abstract. In this case, the abstract reveals
the main focus of the dissertation:
This dissertation examines the role of newspaper
editors in the political turmoil and strife that
characterized late First Empire Rio de Janeiro
(1827-1831). Newspaper editors and their journals
helped change the political culture of late First
Empire Rio de Janeiro by involving the people in
the discussion of state. This change in political
culture is apparent in Emperor Pedro I’s gradual
loss of control over the mechanisms of power. As
the newspapers became more numerous and
powerful, the Emperor lost his legitimacy in the
eyes of the people. To explore the role of the
newspapers in the political events of the late First
Empire, this dissertation analyzes all available
newspapers published in Rio de Janeiro from 1827
to 1831. Newspapers and their editors were
leading forces in the effort to remove power from
the hands of the ruling elite and place it under the
control of the people. In the process, newspapers
helped change how politics operated in the
constitutional monarchy of Brazil.
From this abstract you now know that although the
dissertation has nothing to do with modern
Brazilian politics, it does cover the role of
newspapers in changing traditional mechanisms of
power. After reading the abstract, you can make an
informed judgment about whether the dissertation
would be worthwhile to read.
Indexing
Besides selection, the other main purpose of the
abstract is for indexing. Most article databases in
the online catalog of the library enable you to
search abstracts. This allows for quick retrieval by
users and limits the extraneous items recalled by a
“full-text” search. However, for an abstract to be
useful in an online retrieval system, it must
incorporate the key terms that a potential
researcher would use to search. For example, if
you search Dissertation Abstracts International
using the keywords “France” “revolution” and
“politics,” the search engine would search through
all the abstracts in the database that included
those three words. Without an abstract, the search
engine would be forced to search titles, which, as
we have seen, may not be fruitful, or else search
the full text. It’s likely that a lot more than 60
dissertations have been written with those three
words somewhere in the body of the entire work.
By incorporating keywords into the abstract, the
author emphasizes the central topics of the work
and gives prospective readers enough information
to make an informed judgment about the
applicability of the work.
when submitting articles to journals, especially
online journals
when applying for research grants
when writing a book proposal
when completing the Ph.D. dissertation or M.A.
thesis
when writing a proposal for a conference paper
when writing a proposal for a book chapter
Most often, the author of the entire work (or
prospective work) writes the abstract. However,
there are professional abstracting services that hire
writers to draft abstracts of other people’s work. In
a work with multiple authors, the first author
usually writes the abstract. Undergraduates are
sometimes asked to draft abstracts of books/
articles for classmates who have not read the
larger work.
There are two types of abstracts: descriptive and
informative . They have different aims, so as a
consequence they have different components and
styles. There is also a third type called critical , but
it is rarely used. If you want to find out more about
writing a critique or a review of a work, see the
UNC Writing Center handout on writing a literature
review. If you are unsure which type of abstract
you should write, ask your instructor (if the
abstract is for a class) or read other abstracts in
your field or in the journal where you are
submitting your article.
Descriptive abstracts
A descriptive abstract indicates the type of
information found in the work. It makes no
judgments about the work, nor does it provide
results or conclusions of the research. It does
incorporate key words found in the text and may
include the purpose, methods, and scope of the
research. Essentially, the descriptive abstract
describes the work being abstracted. Some people
consider it an outline of the work, rather than a
summary. Descriptive abstracts are usually very
short—100 words or less.
Informative abstracts
The majority of abstracts are informative. While
they still do not critique or evaluate a work, they
do more than describe it. A good informative
abstract acts as a surrogate for the work itself.
That is, the writer presents and explains all the
main arguments and the important results and
evidence in the complete article/paper/book. An
informative abstract includes the information that
can be found in a descriptive abstract (purpose,
methods, scope) but also includes the results and
conclusions of the research and the
recommendations of the author. The length varies
according to discipline, but an informative abstract
is rarely more than 10% of the length of the entire
work. In the case of a longer work, it may be much
less.
Here are examples of a descriptive and an
informative abstract of this handout:
“Abstracts,” UNC-CH Writing Center, < http://
writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/abstracts/ >.
Descriptive abstract:
The two most common abstract types—descriptive
and informative—are described and examples of
each are provided.
Informative abstract:
Abstracts present the essential elements of a
longer work in a short and powerful statement. The
purpose of an abstract is to provide prospective
readers the opportunity to judge the relevance of
the longer work to their projects. Abstracts also
include the key terms found in the longer work and
the purpose and methods of the research. Authors
abstract various longer works, including book
proposals, dissertations, and online journal
articles. There are two main types of abstracts:
descriptive and informative. A descriptive abstract
briefly describes the longer work, while an
informative abstract presents all the main
arguments and important results. This handout
provides examples of various types of abstracts
and instructions on how to construct one.
Which type should I use?
Your best bet in this case is to ask your instructor
or refer to the instructions provided by the
publisher. You can also make a guess based on
the length allowed; i.e., 100-120 words =
descriptive; 250+ words = informative.
The format of your abstract will depend on the
work being abstracted. An abstract of a scientific
research paper will contain elements not found in
an abstract of a literature article, and vice versa.
However, all abstracts share several mandatory
components, and there are also some optional
parts that you can decide to include or not. When
preparing to draft your abstract, keep the following
key process elements in mind:
Reason for writing:
What is the importance of the research? Why would
a reader be interested in the larger work?
Problem:
What problem does this work attempt to solve?
What is the scope of the project? What is the main
argument/thesis/claim?
Methodology:
An abstract of a scientific work may include
specific models or approaches used in the larger
study. Other abstracts may describe the types of
evidence used in the research.
Results:
Again, an abstract of a scientific work may include
specific data that indicates the results of the
project. Other abstracts may discuss the findings
in a more general way.
Implications:
What changes should be implemented as a result
of the findings of the work? How does this work
add to the body of knowledge on the topic?
(This list of elements is adapted with permission
from Philip Koopman, “How to Write an Abstract.” )
All abstracts include:
A full citation of the source, preceding the abstract.
The most important information first.
The same type and style of language found in the
original, including technical language.
Key words and phrases that quickly identify the
content and focus of the work.
Clear, concise, and powerful language.
Abstracts may include:
The thesis of the work, usually in the first
sentence.
Background information that places the work in the
larger body of literature.
The same chronological structure as the original
work.
How not to write an abstract:
Do not refer extensively to other works.
Do not add information not contained in the
original work.
Do not define terms.
If you are abstracting your own writing
When abstracting your own work, it may be
difficult to condense a piece of writing that you
have agonized over for weeks (or months, or even
years) into a 250-word statement. There are some
tricks that you could use to make it easier,
however.
Reverse outlining:
This technique is commonly used when you are
having trouble organizing your own writing. The
process involves writing down the main idea of
each paragraph on a separate piece of paper– see
our short video . For the purposes of writing an
abstract, try grouping the main ideas of each
section of the paper into a single sentence.
Practice grouping ideas using webbing or color
coding .
For a scientific paper, you may have sections titled
Purpose, Methods, Results, and Discussion. Each
one of these sections will be longer than one
paragraph, but each is grouped around a central
idea. Use reverse outlining to discover the central
idea in each section and then distill these ideas
into one statement.
Cut and paste:
To create a first draft of an abstract of your own
work, you can read through the entire paper and
cut and paste sentences that capture key
passages. This technique is useful for social
science research with findings that cannot be
encapsulated by neat numbers or concrete results.
A well-written humanities draft will have a clear
and direct thesis statement and informative topic
sentences for paragraphs or sections. Isolate these
sentences in a separate document and work on
revising them into a unified paragraph.
If you are abstracting someone else’s writing
When abstracting something you have not written,
you cannot summarize key ideas just by cutting
and pasting. Instead, you must determine what a
prospective reader would want to know about the
work. There are a few techniques that will help you
in this process:
Identify key terms:
Search through the entire document for key terms
that identify the purpose, scope, and methods of
the work. Pay close attention to the Introduction
(or Purpose) and the Conclusion (or Discussion).
These sections should contain all the main ideas
and key terms in the paper. When writing the
abstract, be sure to incorporate the key terms.
Highlight key phrases and sentences:
Instead of cutting and pasting the actual words, try
highlighting sentences or phrases that appear to
be central to the work. Then, in a separate
document, rewrite the sentences and phrases in
your own words.
Don’t look back:
After reading the entire work, put it aside and write
a paragraph about the work without referring to it.
In the first draft, you may not remember all the key
terms or the results, but you will remember what
the main point of the work was. Remember not to
include any information you did not get from the
work being abstracted.
No matter what type of abstract you are writing, or
whether you are abstracting your own work or
someone else’s, the most important step in writing
an abstract is to revise early and often. When
revising, delete all extraneous words and
incorporate meaningful and powerful words. The
idea is to be as clear and complete as possible in
the shortest possible amount of space. The Word
Count feature of Microsoft Word can help you keep
track of how long your abstract is and help you hit
your target length.
Kenneth Tait Andrews, “‘Freedom is a constant
struggle': The dynamics and consequences of the
Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, 1960-1984″
Ph.D. State University of New York at Stony Brook,
1997 DAI-A 59/02, p. 620, Aug 1998
This dissertation examines the impacts of social
movements through a multi-layered study of the
Mississippi Civil Rights Movement from its peak in
the early 1960s through the early 1980s. By
examining this historically important case, I clarify
the process by which movements transform social
structures and the constraints movements face
when they try to do so. The time period studied
includes the expansion of voting rights and gains
in black political power, the desegregation of public
schools and the emergence of white-flight
academies, and the rise and fall of federal anti-
poverty programs. I use two major research
strategies: (1) a quantitative analysis of county-
level data and (2) three case studies. Data have
been collected from archives, interviews,
newspapers, and published reports. This
dissertation challenges the argument that
movements are inconsequential. Some view federal
agencies, courts, political parties, or economic
elites as the agents driving institutional change,
but typically these groups acted in response to the
leverage brought to bear by the civil rights
movement. The Mississippi movement attempted
to forge independent structures for sustaining
challenges to local inequities and injustices. By
propelling change in an array of local institutions,
movement infrastructures had an enduring legacy
in Mississippi.
Now let’s break down this abstract into its
component parts to see how the author has
distilled his entire dissertation into a ~200 word
abstract.
What the dissertation does
This dissertation examines the impacts of social
movements through a multi-layered study of the
Mississippi Civil Rights Movement from its peak in
the early 1960s through the early 1980s. By
examining this historically important case, I clarify
the process by which movements transform social
structures and the constraints movements face
when they try to do so.
How the dissertation does it
The time period studied in this dissertation
includes the expansion of voting rights and gains
in black political power, the desegregation of public
schools and the emergence of white-flight
academies, and the rise and fall of federal anti-
poverty programs. I use two major research
strategies: (1) a quantitative analysis of county-
level data and (2) three case studies.
What materials are used
Data have been collected from archives, interviews,
newspapers, and published reports.
Conclusion
This dissertation challenges the argument that
movements are inconsequential. Some view federal
agencies, courts, political parties, or economic
elites as the agents driving institutional change,
but typically these groups acted in response to
movement demands and the leverage brought to
bear by the civil rights movement. The Mississippi
movement attempted to forge independent
structures for sustaining challenges to local
inequities and injustices. By propelling change in
an array of local institutions, movement
infrastructures had an enduring legacy in
Mississippi.
Keywords
social movements
Civil Rights Movement
Mississippi
voting rights
desegregation
Luis Lehner, “Gravitational radiation from black
hole spacetimes” Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh,
1998 DAI-B 59/06, p. 2797, Dec 1998
The problem of detecting gravitational radiation is
receiving considerable attention with the
construction of new detectors in the United States,
Europe, and Japan. The theoretical modeling of the
wave forms that would be produced in particular
systems will expedite the search for and analysis
of detected signals. The characteristic formulation
of GR is implemented to obtain an algorithm
capable of evolving black holes in 3D
asymptotically flat spacetimes. Using
compactification techniques, future null infinity is
included in the evolved region, which enables the
unambiguous calculation of the radiation produced
by some compact source. A module to calculate
the waveforms is constructed and included in the
evolution algorithm. This code is shown to be
second-order convergent and to handle highly
non-linear spacetimes. In particular, we have
shown that the code can handle spacetimes whose
radiation is equivalent to a galaxy converting its
whole mass into gravitational radiation in one
second. We further use the characteristic
formulation to treat the region close to the
singularity in black hole spacetimes. The code
carefully excises a region surrounding the
singularity and accurately evolves generic black
hole spacetimes with apparently unlimited stability.
This science abstract covers much of the same
ground as the humanities one, but it asks slightly
different questions.
Why do this study
The problem of detecting gravitational radiation is
receiving considerable attention with the
construction of new detectors in the United States,
Europe, and Japan. The theoretical modeling of the
wave forms that would be produced in particular
systems will expedite the search and analysis of
the detected signals.
What the study does
The characteristic formulation of GR is
implemented to obtain an algorithm capable of
evolving black holes in 3D asymptotically flat
spacetimes. Using compactification techniques,
future null infinity is included in the evolved region,
which enables the unambiguous calculation of the
radiation produced by some compact source. A
module to calculate the waveforms is constructed
and included in the evolution algorithm.
Results
This code is shown to be second-order
convergent and to handle highly non-linear
spacetimes. In particular, we have shown that the
code can handle spacetimes whose radiation is
equivalent to a galaxy converting its whole mass
into gravitational radiation in one second. We
further use the characteristic formulation to treat
the region close to the singularity in black hole
spacetimes. The code carefully excises a region
surrounding the singularity and accurately evolves
generic black hole spacetimes with apparently
unlimited stability.
Keywords
gravitational radiation (GR)
spacetimes
black holes
We consulted these works while writing the
original version of this handout. This is not a
comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s
topic, and we encourage you to do your own
research to find the latest publications on this
topic. Please do not use this list as a model for
the format of your own reference list, as it may not
match the citation style you are using. For
guidance on formatting citations, please see the
UNC Libraries citation tutorial .
Koopman, Philip. “How to Write an Abstract.”
Lancaster, F.W. Indexing and Abstracting in Theory
and Practice, 3rd edition. (London: Facet, 2003),
95.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “Abstracts.”
St. Cloud University, LEO, “Writing Abstracts.”
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