Abstracts are brief summaries included before longer texts.
Most long sections of text should begin with an abstract in some form. Including an abstract allows users to decide immediately whether the text is relevant to them.
Including an abstract
There are different styles of abstract. Here are a few:
- Academic papers include an explicit "abstract" section before the text, usually of around 100-250 words.
- Stories from press agencies (Reuters, PA) are always summarised in their first sentence.
- Articles in magazines often begin with a summary paragraph in larger type.
- Another magazine technique is "pullquotes" (quotes taken from the text of an article, printed in a large font intended to catch the eye of potential readers). These are intended to summarise the content of the story, although they're not as detailed as traditional abstracts.
These styles are equally valid and will be appropriate in different situations - most web pages do not need a 200-word abstract!
Good abstracts summarise the entire content of the article or text, including any conclusions. Although it's obviously necessary to decide what to leave out, a general guideline is that if you're leaving anything out purely because you want people to read the article to discover it, then it should be included.
As an example, this page itself begins with an abstract. That abstract summarises three things: basic information (description of abstracts), conclusion (long sections of text should begin with an abstract), and reasoning (abstracts let users decide whether documents are relevant).
Reasoning for abstracts
Abstracts are necessary because they help impatient users to make the "read/don't read" decision quickly.
An abstract should (implicitly) answer two questions:
- Why the user should read the article.
- Why the user should not read the article.
In addition to this primary use, an abstract also helps those who do decide to read the article. (You're probably familiar with the "say what you're going to say; say it; then say what you said" doctrine of presentations; the abstract provides the first part of that in written text.)
