Writing an abstract of a larger
publication you have researched is a crucial skill for any profession. For the
poster project, please write a short (about 75 words), one-paragraph
abstract about your poster. This
will be due Wednesday, November 17 at 9:00 p.m. The abstract must be submitted as a Word or text
attachment by e-mail to: tfurutani@sccd.ctc.edu (do clearly title the e-mail ÒGEL
101 poster abstractÓ Ñ you arenÕt the only students submitting poster abstracts
to me!)
The format of the
abstract should be as follows:
Author (thatÕs you)
TITLE (IN ALL CAPS)
Body of the abstract
For instance:
Andrea Slattery, North Seattle Community College
MT.SAINT HELENS MAY 18, 1980: THE TIMELINE OF LAHAR ACTIVITY OF THE NORTH FORK AND SOUTH FORK TOUTLE RIVER
Lahars occurred immediately following the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helens, remodeling the landscape of the Toutle River Valley. One of the initial lahars occurred at 8:50 PDT, which consisted of large volumes of water and lithic debris that was ejected from the eruption which developed into a mudflow down the South Fork Toutle River. The most voluminous and destructive lahar formed at the headwaters of the North Fork Toutle River occurring at approximately 13:33 PDT and consisted of water-saturated parts of the hummocky debris avalanche. The mudflow caused by the lahars reached the Cowlitz River and as far as 70 miles downstream to the Columbia River.
IÕve included material
from the following website in order to guide you:
http://wwwindex.rdg.ac.uk/~kcshuwil/cme/abstract.html
since you are not writing
a paper, please modify the suggestions as necessary. In addition, the abstract
should not contain any footnotes or references; it is meant to be a
Òstand-aloneÓ work.
Abstracts are often the
least considered but most important part of any paper. Most readers of a
journal will read most of the abstracts, but very few will read the full
papers. Perhaps 95% of readers will read only the abstract.
The need for abstracts to be terse often causes difficulty and can taint what is otherwise a perfectly acceptable style of writing. The following suggestions should help to reduce the need for authors to re-write their abstracts.
The
abstract should not be a table of contents in prose, neither should it be an
introduction. It should be informative. Tell the reader what the research was
about, how it was undertaken and what was discovered, but not how the poster or
paper is organized. The main findings must be summarized. If there are too many
of them, then just exemplify them in the abstract. The essential elements of
the abstract are:
¥ Background: A simple
opening sentence or two placing the work in context
¥ Aims: One or two sentences
giving the purpose of the work
¥ Method(s): One or two
sentences explaining what was done
¥ Results: One or two
sentences indicating the main findings
¥ Conclusions: One
sentence giving the most important consequence of the work.
The following guidelines
have been extracted from recent criticisms of real abstracts. This may help to overcome some of the
most frequent problems:
¥ Do not commence with
"this paperÉ", "this reportÉ" or similar. It is better to
write about the research than about the paper
¥ Similarly, do not
explain the sections or parts of the paper
¥ Avoid sentences that
end in "Éis described", "Éis reported", "Éis
analysed" or similar. These are simply too vague to be informative
¥ Do not begin sentences
with "it is suggested thatÉ", "it is believed thatÉ",
"it is felt thatÉ" or similar. In every case, the four words can be
omitted without damaging the essential message
¥ Do not write in the
first person in any form.
Thus, not only should you avoid "I", but also "we",
"the author", "the writer" and so on. Again, this is
because the abstract should be about the research, not about the act of writing