By Levi van Tol, Washington State University Vancouver Neuroscience Student
kimberleypeta.com/project/nitty-gritty/
Many times in life we are faced with piles of information. Information that is indeed useful and needed, but often times can be better interpreted with a summary. Let’s take the current political debates. While all the dialogue is useful for context, many times a debate is summarized by a candidate’s key points. These points are a quick and easy way for a reader to see what is going on and to decide whether or not the whole dialogue is pertinent to their interests. Just like these blurbs, abstracts are a scientist’s way of taking a snapshot of their research.
Abstracts normally occur at the beginning of a journal article. Often times an abstract is limited to 250 words with an emphasis on concisely conveying the research and its findings. There are multiple ways to write an abstract and authors prefer different styles over others. All abstracts will aim to include key features like a purpose, hypothesis, methods, results, and implications. Abstracts are often written for technical – not a lay – audience.Let’s take a look at some styles.
The first style of abstracts goes through the key features in order. Writers will incorporate the sections of their paper into their abstract in chronological order. Usually this order is a brief introduction and hypothesis, then the methods and results, and lastly the implications. This style may be written as one paragraph or broken into shorter paragraphs with titles. The second style of abstracts are written in a more fluid way. Sometimes a study may have multiple results with different methods for each result. In this case a style can be used to reflect those relationships where methods and results follow eachother individually. This second style doesn’t organize sections by title.
Regardless of the style of abstract, there are some universal “don’ts” that every writer should avoid. Some of these include references in the abstract, abbreviations that are only defined in the paper, and an introduction that is too lengthy. In conclusion, an abstract should guide readers about what they can expect to find in a paper and give them the nitty gritty on what is to come.