An abstract is a concise stand-alone summary of your work which gives readers the first impression of the document and permits them to decide whether or not it suits their interests’ prior reading. It is located after the title and before the main body of the paper/thesis and portrays as much qualitative and quantitative information in the document. Before writing an abstract, it is important to consider the following pre-requisites:

• Determine the type of abstract you want to write; informative (condensed summary), descriptive (summary without results section) or critical (study or work being done to the writer’s own research)
• Refer to the guidelines of your paper/thesis; maximum/minimum length, style requirements and audience
• Appropriate formatting (introduction, methods, results/conclusions)

Typically, an informative abstract answer these in about 100-250 words:

• Why did you do the study or project?
• What did you do? – The ideas, hypothesis, concepts or theories that were investigated
• How did you do the work? – Data generated and how it was gathered. Also, analysis/synthesis done (tests, scales, indices or summary measures)
• What did you find? – Most significant finding
• What do your findings mean?

Studies that assess new methods or apparatus have a different approach and the latter questions might be changed to:

• What are the advantages of the method/apparatus?
• How well does it work?

Other useful points to keep in mind about abstracts include:

• Avoid repeating or rephrasing the title or referring to information found in the study
• Avoid telegraphic phrases and complicated syntax
• Do not use abbreviations, acronyms, trade names or symbols in the abstract
• Use keywords from the document (to facilitate search and citation)

Are you done? If yes, then revisit once more while remembering the Power of “Less is more”, Keep it top‐level, keep it short, after reading your abstract, your reader should be eager to discover the full paper.