Writing an abstract for a technical paper

If you blame a lazy or dumb reviewer, you are missing the opportunity to improve. Early on, the point is to organize your ideas, not to create finished sentences.

The reason for this is that the reader is experiencing the paper in real time; the paper is like a conversation between the authors and the reader. Also, I am clever. Examples of acceptably written abstracts are presented in Table 6 ; one of these has been modified from an actual publication.

Be sure that those exact phrases appear in your abstract, so that they will turn up at the top of a search result listing. Abstract Abstracts of scientific papers are sometimes poorly written, often lack important information, and occasionally convey a biased picture.

As a related point, do not anthropomorphize computers: Numbers and measurements Digits of precision: Organize your responses thematically. But now, instead of merely convincing the reader to keep reading the rest of the attached paper, an abstract must convince the reader to leave the comfort of an office and go hunt down a copy of the article from a library or worse, obtain one after a long wait through inter-library loan.

Writing style Passive voice has no place in technical writing. Do not confuse relative and absolute measurements. Many conferences provide an author response period: Computer program source code Your code examples should either be real code, or should be close to real code.

If you document and automate these steps, then you can easily regenerate the paper when needed. Embedded system designers may be interested in my blog. The abstract is the only part of the paper that readers see when they search through electronic databases such as PubMed.

Afterward, organize what you wrote thematically, bringing related points together. This is because readers who peruse an abstract do so to learn about the findings of the study.

Abstracts have always served the function of "selling" your work. Doing so makes them easier to write, because the rest of the paper is already complete and can just be described. Use the biggest-resolution screen you can, and magnify the partion you will copture.

Responding to conference reviews This section is most relevant to fields like computer science where conferences are the premier publication venue. If you discuss approaches that were not successful, do so briefly, and typically only after you have discussed the successful approach.


It obscures who the actor was, what caused it, and when it happened. The progress report will give you practice writing about your work, oftentimes trying out new explanations.

Some journals include additional sections, such as Objectives between Background and Methods and Limitations at the end of the abstract. It can be acceptable to state an imperfect solution first with a clear indication that it is imperfect if it is a simpler version of the full solution, and the full solution is a direct modification of the simpler one.

The abstract tries to compact information down to that percent level or lower for longer reports. An outside reader can tell you even more. If you must use a bitmap which is only appropriate for screenshots of a toolthen produce them at very high resolution.

Some people like to write the abstract, and often also the introduction, last. Are your results general, potentially generalizable, or specific to a particular case?

Thus, for the vast majority of readers, the paper does not exist beyond its abstract. In a business context, an "executive summary" is often the only piece of a report read by the people who matter; and it should be similar in content if not tone to a journal paper abstract.

Make sure that the descriptive abstract does not include informative abstract phrasing; make sure that the informative abstract does not include descriptive abstract phrasing. This type summarizes the key facts and conclusions in the body of the report.

For the whole paper, this is probably a paragraph. Solar or wind power or both generated on site can economically meet the broad range of these needs.

Informative Abstracts The informative abstract, as its name implies, provides information from the body of the report—specifically, the key facts and conclusions.

Start the paragraph with a brief heading or title about the point. Philip KoopmanCarnegie Mellon University October, Abstract Because on-line search databases typically contain only abstracts, it is vital to write a complete but concise description of your work to entice potential readers into obtaining a copy of the full paper.

If you are taking a technical writing course based on this online textbook, your technical report depending on your instructor may use two types:An abstract is a summary of a body of information.


Sometimes, abstracts are in fact called summaries—sometimes, executive summaries or executive abstracts. The business and scientific worlds define different types of abstracts according to their needs.


The primary target of this paper is the young researcher; however, authors with all levels of experience may find useful ideas in the paper. 1 Writing Technical Abstracts Kent State University Dr.

Jonathan I Maletic Contents of a Technical Paper • Title, Author(s) • Abstract – (. Some (like Benjamin Herman’s history abstract and Diana Dewi and Jennifer Kittleson’s apparel and textile design abstract) include nearly final results, while others (like Laura Silberman’s curriculum & instruction abstract) include preliminary and projected results.

How to Write a Technical Paper: in a technical paper. Based on the content of the abstract, the reader will decide whether the pa-per is worthy enough to merit further study.

The Keywords: writing guides, writing technical papers, format guides 1 Introduction.

How to write a technical paper

Tips for Writing Technical Papers The material in the abstract should not be repeated later word for word in the paper. (Exercise: Write an abstract for the multiway sort example Many papers have a submitted (and later published) conference version, along with a "full paper" technical report on the web.

It's important to manage versions.

Writing an abstract for a technical paper
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