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Writing An Abstract Précis or Summary

These texts, regardless of whether they are called abstracts, précis, or summaries, aim to concisely present only the key ideas from larger works. They inform audiences of the overall content while omitting specific details. The structure and length of these summaries depends on their intended use and disciplinary expectations. Academic abstracts typically discuss the research problem, methodology, major findings, and conclusions in 150-300 words without results statistics. They are written after completing the work.

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Tatsuya Shiba
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368 views

Writing An Abstract Précis or Summary

These texts, regardless of whether they are called abstracts, précis, or summaries, aim to concisely present only the key ideas from larger works. They inform audiences of the overall content while omitting specific details. The structure and length of these summaries depends on their intended use and disciplinary expectations. Academic abstracts typically discuss the research problem, methodology, major findings, and conclusions in 150-300 words without results statistics. They are written after completing the work.

Uploaded by

Tatsuya Shiba
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Writing an

Abstract, Précis
or Summary
English for Academic and Professional Purpose
Texts classified as either
abstract, précis, or
summary, and
sometimes as synopsis,
are all the same.
Whatever they may be
called, these texts aim
to precisely condense a
larger work to present
only the key ideas.
They tell the
audience the gist of
what has been
read, listened to, or
viewed.
Note that the way we
write an abstract,
précis, or summary
depends on the
expectations of a
particular discipline or
field.
There are
different kinds of
Abstract
Descriptive Abstract – the
purpose is simply to pique the
interest of the target audience
(e.g. publishing companies,
libraries, and movie catalogues
do not give away the actual
content of the material when
they write summaries of
materials.)
Summative Abstract –
this is more preferred in
an academic text. It
presents the key ideas
and major findings of the
study like research
papers.
Since an abstract, a précis, and a
summary aim to present the key
ideas of the text, the general rule is
to condense the information into
around 15 percent of the original
length of the text. However, this is
not a hard and fast rule. In most
cases, a 6,000-word research article
for an academic journal may
require only 200 to 250 words for
its abstract.
Structure of an
Abstract, a Précis,
or a Summary
The structure of the idea
depends on how it will be
used. For example, the
abstract of a research paper
usually contains 150 to 300
words. It does not include
specific result statistics, and is
last to be written.
Rationale – (around 20%)
Research problems –
(around 10%)
Methodology – (around 20%)
Major findings – (around 40%)
Conclusion and implications -
(around 10%)
Guidelines in Writing an
Abstract, Précis or Summary
• Use words or phrases indicating that you are
presenting the topic. Reporting verbs are
most useful for this purpose. Some phrases
you can use are “The text reports that …”, “The
authors claim…”, “The author clarifies…”.
• Write the main idea of each paragraph using
your own words. In some cases, you can write
one main idea for multiple paragraphs
particularly of a research paper.
• Never copy in verbatim a single sentence
from the original text.
END

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