How to write an abstract in 30 minutes
Have you ever been in the following situation?
You have selected a conference you would like to attend, and you have
all the information you need for writing the abstract (the conference
topic which suits your work, the maximum amount of words, submission
through a website or email). Maybe you've googled "How to write an
abstract". And there you are, with a new Word document and a scary white
page in front of you. You go and get a cup of coffee, and stare at the
screen. You play around with some words to come up with a good title
which is within the maximum amount of characters allowed. You go and get
another cup of coffee. Check Facebook. Get a snack... And before you
know a few hours have gone by and Word is still showing an almost empty
screen.
I've found what really works for me to write an abstract in roughly 30
minutes. As I was googling "How to write an abstract" in the past, I
came across
this article by Philip Koopman which caught my attention.
What I most like about this website is the questions it has in the different sections your abstract should contain:
Motivation: Why do we care about the problem and the results?
Problem statement: What problem are you trying to solve?
Approach: How did you go about solving or making progress on the
problem? Did you use simulation, analytic models, prototype
construction, or analysis of field data for an actual product?
Results: What's the answer?
Conclusions: What are the implications of your answer? Is it going to
change the world (unlikely), be a significant "win", be a nice hack, or
simply serve as a road sign indicating that this path is a waste of time
(all of the previous results are useful)?
In fact, whenever I now write an abstract, I simply copy and paste these
questions into a new document. Then I start answering them one by one.
Sometimes I just talk out loud and write it down. Style and grammar
don't matter to me at that point - I just need to get the ideas out
first.
These answers then make up the first draft of my abstract. I simply
delete the questions, and print out this first version. At that point, I
start manipulating the abstract into a readable text, in correct
English (as good as possible in my case), and making sure the entire
piece flows from its starting point and background description towards
the results and conclusions.
source of material :http://phdtalk.blogspot.com