Abstract Writing Guide

Abstract Writing Guide

Abdul Razak Hussain Faculty of Information and Communication Technology Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka April 2008 Abstract Conveying important and accurate information about your report in a concise yet complete manner is becoming more and more important as readers are inundated with numerous publications. This article briefs about the purpose of abstracts and provides essential elements that a good abstract should have. This functional check list can be used to guide the abstract writing process. Several equally important non-functional considerations are also highlighted. Together, the functional and non-functional considerations may increase the acceptability of an intended publication.

Introduction Many good project reports go unnoticed, unaccepted or unpublished simply because of the badly written abstracts. Given the number of papers or reports to review within a specified time, reviewers would based their selection on good abstracts. Writing a good abstract so that the readers are 'hooked' to get hold of the entire report can be a very challenging task – sometimes even demanding than writing the report itself. A good abstract is like a good commercial; it 'sells' a report just like a product brochure promotes a product.

What An Abstract Should Be An abstract primarily serves as a outline or a map of your work – what you have done or propose to do. Not only it summarizes your report, but also it convinces the reader that the entire report is worth reading and holds valuable information. There are two types of abstract – descriptive and informative (refer Table 1).

Table 1: Types of abstract

Descriptive Purpose

Informative

Conveying general information about Conveying specific information of the the contents or the organisation of report. the report. Very short – short. From few sentences Short. From a paragraph to several to a paragraph. pages. “This report concludes that mobile game devices are 80% more prevalent among city...