I have written many essays, and published some, with my thesis. I have sat in many seminars and read many hundreds (if not thousands) of articles. All of them contain an abstract. And most journals release the abstract of article for free. This makes your abstract one of the most crucial elements. Most people only read the abstract, and if you cannot convince someone in your abstract, they will not read your paper or essay or thesis/dissertation. So, what is an abstract, and how would you go about writing one? In this post, I want to explore my own way of writing an abstract, which might help you. It is not a rule, nor a method, nor is it the only way of going about writing an abstract. I started using this method, and it stuck with me so far. In the future it might change. So, please read on if you feel like this will become important in your life.
What is an abstract? Versus a blurb
On the back of a book is the blurb. This is a short description of what the book is about. This is relevant to people who want to read the book. But the blurb cannot give away all the clues to the secrets, or the whole story. This will essentially ruin the book for everyone. You read the book to be in the present while it unfolds. If you know the punchline, you will be in the “future”, that is, you will wait for the punchline to happen, but you already know what it is. The blurb functions then as to lure you in with the unknown which will become know if you read the book. The story is yet-to-be-unfolded, and the blurb gives you a taste of what is to come.
This is not what an abstract does. The abstract tells you exactly what the answer (punchline) is, and it tells you exactly what the author did. It also tells you what you need to know in order to read the article or essay. You will then read the article in the “future”, that is, you already know what the conclusion is. The story (if you will) is-already-unfolded. If you find the conclusion or argument intriguing and of use, you will want to read the article to find out how the author managed to get to the conclusion. The luring of a reader is thus not in the yet-to-be-unveiled-punchline, instead, the luring happens with the way in which you reason and argue.
Why and how to write an abstract
Why would you need to write an abstract? It is relatively simple. You want the reader to know exactly what your article is about, what you did, in relation to whom and what, why you did what you did, and what your conclusion is. If these things are not explicit, people will skim over your work and disregard it. Also, the abstract is maybe the only part of your article people are going to read. All the more important to sway people into your court, and to make them want to read your article. Academic writing is boring, and people need to suffer in some sense to read the work. It helps if you can be concise and lure people into reading your work. So, how do you go about writing it?
Writing an abstract normally happens at the end of your writing. You can write it whilst you are writing your article, but you will eventually rewrite your abstract many times. Or, you will in any case rewrite it many times. The most important part of writing an abstract is to be concise and to not use any references, nor should you use terms that are yet to be explained. There should be minimal explaining in your abstract. The abstract is mainly there to situate your work in relation to others and the debate you are entering and to convey what you did, how you did it and why you did it. The word count of an abstract will obviously vary from department to department and journal to journal.
Here is my “method” to write an abstract. A word of warning. I am in the humanities, more specifically, philosophy. The way in which I write abstracts are different from other departments, like the sciences. In any case, see my little formula I begin with:
- General statement about topic.
- The general problem faced in this topic.
- More focused problem, i.e. identified unresolved problem.
- What you want to do in this paper, general.
- What you want to do in this paper, very specific.
- Continuation if needed(?).
- Aim of the paper, i.e. what do you want to achieve?,.
- Concluding remarks.
I will briefly explain each step.
Firstly, I normally begin by writing a very general statement about the topic I am writing in. This is not a topic you will deal with in the paper or article, it is merely one that situates your topic in the broader scheme of the topic for the reader.
Secondly, you want to now establish or situate the broader problem in the topic you are writing. This is still not directly the problem you are writing about, but this is the main problem you are dealing with in general. For example, global warming is the general topic you are writing about (which you highlighted in the first part). Here you highlight say crop failure as the topic you are dealing with.
Thirdly. Now you write your problem or the problem your article deals with. For example, crop failure is the main problem, but specifically why, say, maize is dying in the southern hemisphere, is then your specific problem.
Fourthly, fifthly and sixthly, you write about what you want to do with the paper. I break this into two parts. You tackle the problem of maize crop failure in the southern hemisphere in the manner of XYZ, but then you write specifically I tackle the problem in manner Z. I like to write broadly to give the reader a sense of what you are doing in loose terms, and then you home in on the manner you are doing it. If it needs, you can write a little bit extra. Sometimes you need to say something more.
Seventhly, you write the aim of the paper, what was the aim? This is relatively simple; it is basically why you wrote and did what you did. The aim of tackling the problem of the reduction in maize crops in the southern hemisphere will give food back to people who lost it etc. etc.
And lastly, I like to just write a concluding sentence, but this is not really necessary.
And that is my “method”. There are so many ways you can write an abstract, and this might merely be the start! You can change and write and rewrite, and begin from scratch again. The reason why I personally like this structure, is that it makes broad claims to help the reader understand in what field and topic you are writing, and then it homes in on what you exactly want to do. It does not help to tell the reader what you are doing in a very specific manner if they do not even know the topic you are writing in.
If you know of other methods, or if this helped you, please let me know in the comments! I really hope this might help you.