How to Write an Abstract

The abstract is a brief description of the work, containing a list of the main issues of the article.

It performs the following functions:

• provides an opportunity to establish the main content of a scientific article
• determines its relevance and helps to decide whether to refer to the full text of the article.

In the abstract, it is necessary to identify the main ideas (sections) of the article, combine and present them in a short form.

The Main Characteristics of the Abstract

When writing an abstract, you should pay attention to the following questions.

• Word limit. When writing annotations, you must adhere to the established limit of words (10-250).
• Ease of presentation. Your language should be simple and understandable to a wide range of specialists in a particular field of knowledge. It is recommended to use well-known common terms.
• Lack of details. In the abstract, it is necessary to avoid unnecessary details and specific numbers.
• Keywords. Authors are asked to highlight the keywords of the paper. It must be done for search engines and for the classification of articles by topic. The author needs to indicate the number of keywords required to increase the chances of finding an article through search engines.

Writing Style

While writing annotations, pay special attention to your style of presentation. Try to avoid long and complex sentences. Your thoughts should be stated as briefly and clearly as possible since it is the style of presentation that facilitates the comprehension of what is read.

The Essence of the Abstract

The first thing you must remember is that the abstract is a brief description of a work, but not retelling of its content. The main purpose of any abstract is to give a potential reader an idea of the essence of the article. It should explain what is at stake in this work and how it may be interesting to the reader.

An Example of the Abstract

The subject of the analysis in the article are comparisons related to the type of semantic transformations, which are based on analogy and assimilation. The object of the research is their semantic features. This artistic tool gives the product a stylistic diversity, expressing in figurative form the essence of the object. The system of comparisons and the ways of their application reflect the author's worldview. The main research method is descriptive, based on the observations of comparisons as a graphic-expressive means of language, their description, and classification. Based on the conducted research, the author comes to the conclusion that in this work two groups of comparisons are distinguished. The comparisons of the first type contain the direct name of the trait, which is common to the phenomena being compared. The second type is formed by the comparisons with partial and full implicitness of the base, while the first one contains the names of those aspects of the subject that have common features with the corresponding aspects of the standard; the latter does not include such names. Both types perform compressive and associative functions, introducing emotions, dynamism, and expressiveness into the artistic text.