Writing an abstract is one task everyone undertaking a research writing must understand and show a certain level of proficiency. A good abstract shows the researcher’s mastery of the topic of choice.
An abstract simply summarizes a lengthy research article or the bulk of an academic or scientific writing, giving the reader a glimpse of what to expect in the entire write up.
Just like the synopsis, which is a brief summary of a general survey. Abstract is a short write up used as an overview by any reader to ascertain if what he/she is about to read worth reading. This overview covers the problem, purpose, methodology, results and the conclusion of the research writing.
This article is a simple guide for anyone who intends to write an abstract for academic paper or other writings.
- Write your work – To be able to write a good abstract, an in-depth knowledge of the entire work is needed. Therefore, it is always important to complete the research survey and write the entire work, beginning from the introduction to the conclusion.
- Generally speaking, a lot of students usually feel that the abstract should be the first part of an academic writing simply because they always find it written at the fore of the research paper.
- Some experienced researchers in higher learning centers are faced with this challenge of writing their abstracts.
- However, a good abstract is always written as a summary of an already completed academic paper. It is wrong for you to assume that you already know what your abstract should look like. Don’t be in a haste. Once your work is completed, then you can now review it and begin to write the abstract.
- Study and re-assess your paper – As earlier mentioned, a good understanding of your paper is key to writing a suitable abstract. Studying your paper gives you the orientation needed to arrange the abstract in such a way that information flow from the beginning to the end of your academic paper.
- For instance, you have to assess the length and the style required for your research project, journal publication or seminar paper.
- Also, your supervisor may demand that you write in a certain format. Therefore, a good knowledge of what is expected by who you are writing to is imperative.
- Know your audience – Just as every good musician would consider the audience listening to his/her song while performing, you have to know your audience while writing. Readers read numerous abstracts to find their work of interest.
- For academic papers, most audience hurry to read the main point of discussion as well as the arguments, which would make them decide whether or not to have interest in your work.
- If experts or members of your professional body will also read your abstract, it will be better to use appropriate terms to suite the language of the subject.
- However, simple grammar should also be employed to make it easy for a lay man or someone from another field of study to understand your write up.
- Determine the purpose of writing – Every written paper be it an academic, scientific or journal article is written for a purpose. To capture the interest of your reader, that purpose must be mentioned in the abstract to either draw the readers attention to the entire work or they move on to another work.
Example, you carried out a research project on the impact of COVID-19 on the Asian economy. The big question is, does this study matter? There are a lot of topics of interest to every reader.
- You should communicate to any reader why you chose to carry out your research survey or project. Your audience are more interested in your findings and what makes it important.
- Is the purpose of your project and the findings convincing enough to propel a reader to proceed to read your full text or main article?
- Identify the problem to address – Isolating a problem to be addressed is a critical part of every article, which must be seen in the abstract too.
- For instance, if your project focuses on addressing ‘the need for women to adopt contraception’, it should be captured in your abstract.
- This could take the tone of a critical or informative writing, however, the bottom-line for you to focus on the problem, stay on the argument and critically mention in your abstract.
- This will enable your reader follow the flow of information as expected in the entire work.
- Choose your abstract type – An abstract can be informative, critical or descriptive depending on the type of study.
- For example, your work addresses the emerging challenges of climate change. That would be an informative write up. Thus, your abstract will entail an overview of the entire work in a single paragraph, up to an entire page. It may be longer than the descriptive abstract.
- A descriptive abstract allows you to mention the problem to be address, purpose and methods employed in carrying out your study. I could be written with up to 200 words, most times the results is not always mentioned.
- A critical abstract which is an overview of a critical research focuses on criticizing the methods, designs and results of other peoples’ works. It is mostly employed by critical writers, though it has attributes of the other types of abstract, but is not commonly used.
- Summarize the methods used – Especially in descriptive and comparative studies, the methods used must be detailed. Your reader at this point may begin to have more interest in your work.
Of course, the methods can either be yours or obtained from other peoples’ work. Here, you must explain with reference to the authors. If it is your method, you mention it with respect to your variables and approach. You have to make it simple and clear for a reader to follow.
- List your results – Every research survey or project processes the data collected into readable forms. After being analyzed, if becomes the results of that study. It is required that such results are included in the written abstract to make your audience understand faster what was found in that work.
Don’t forget your result is what will support your general findings and forms the basis of the argument raise by the hypothesis of your research work.
Also, your results must be concise and simple to understand. Don’t bore your audience with complex stuffs. Go straight to the point.
- Write a Conclusion – This can even be a sentence or two complementing the findings of your research survey or project. Here, it is the ending of the summary which will point out the implications of your study and make your reader understand if your findings were specific or applicable generally. In any of kind of abstract, a conclusion is needed and it is what gives meaning to your work.
- Proofread/Format – Now that you know the basic steps to write a complete abstract, you will need to read it through so that you can make the necessary corrections. That first draft copy is not what you need. Format it from the beginning. Your introduction should be apt.
- Check for words or sentences you need to rephrase. Use words and phrases pertaining to the subject of discussion. Use some words more often to form keywords of your abstracts if you are writing for a journal publication.
- Table, graphs, charts and organograms are not always included in the abstract. Remove them if you have any. You don’t need to bore your readers.
- Check for flow of information and keep it in order. Check your spellings again and grammatical errors. Revise your abstract and write it all over from scratch. Now, your abstract is ready.
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