Have you ever noticed
how promos for movies are edited? Have you noticed that we curiously watch
movies or TV serials based on the catchy promos. Yes, we are many times tempted by the way
promo provokes us to watch the actual movie or TV serial.
At present
entertainment media is doing wonders to create promos that drive the public
crazy about the movies before their release. The box office successes of movies
or TRP ratings of TV serials depend largely upon the catchy promos.
Oh….ho..you may
wonder that what it has to do with abstracts…that we draft during research
paper / research project report writing? Mind well, the abstract of your paper
may lead to acceptance or rejection, based on its meaningful and thoughtful words.
Abstract is
summary of your work. Writing abstracts is a significant process. Although
people neglect the structure of abstract, it definitely drives the decision
parameter on whether your paper / project are worth to read or accept.
So, a reader who
is digging through a long list of papers available on the internet may decide
to read your paper by reading the abstract. It is desired that abstract of a
paper should help a reader to find appropriately the contents; he or she is
searching for. Similarly an abstract must eliminate the overhead on reader to
read volume of irrelevant information during his / her literature review.
Friends, there
is no algorithm or generalized process or recipe for writing abstract. I hope
this article will help you write your abstract at least that serves its
objective. Let us try to list down the steps that you may adopt to write an
abstract.
Steps:
1.
Introduction (approximately 40 to 50
words).
2.
Problem statement (approximately 40 to
50 words).
3.
Approach / method (s) (approximately 40
to 50 words).
4.
Results (approximately 40 to 50 words).
5.
Conclusion (approximately 40 to 50 words).
This is just a
guideline. The word limit may depend upon the type of abstract. Abstract may be
descriptive, informative (extended) or Critical. The above mentioned word limit
may be flexibly changed as per the publisher’s requirements.
The following
diagram will help you draft your abstract according to the steps mentioned
above.
Hints:
1.
Write your paper / project report before
writing the abstract.
2.
Avoid Quotes and citations, humor, jokes
etc.
3.
Avoid graphics, Tables charts, and
equations in abstract.
4.
Avoid use of words “I” or “we”.
5.
Make it readable, without complex terms
that most readers don’t relate.
6.
Avoid abbreviations or acronyms.
Tip:
How to keep the word limit?
This is the
toughest task…isn’t it? It requires a little linguistic exercise. First write
the abstract comfortably considering all the above structural components (i.e.
Introduction, problem statement, approach / method (s), results, and conclusion).
Now do Natural language filtering.
1.
Eliminate stop words, phrases and sentences
with less linguistic importance.
2. Replace phrases with equivalent single
word synonyms. In other words, Analyze meaning and rephrase some sentences with
less word count.
You may refer
online help available or help provided by popular word processing software to
do this. Hope this helps.
Happy
researching!!
