Template
Write an abstract by answering five questions in order
You have a finished paper and 250 words to make an editor, a reviewer, and a search engine understand it.
- Typical length
- Most journals allow 150–300 words, with 250 the most common cap. Conference and grant abstracts are often shorter. The limit is enforced at submission.
- Usual tense
- Past tense for what you did and found, present tense for what is generally true and for the conclusion.
- First person
- Widely accepted in abstracts (“we examined”), which reads more directly than the passive alternative. Match the journal.
- Citations
- Almost never included. Abstracts are read out of context by indexing services, so a reference has nothing to point at.
- Structured or unstructured
- Medical and health journals usually mandate labeled headings; humanities and many social science journals expect a single paragraph. Both follow the same five moves.
- Check with the journal
- The word limit, whether headings are required, how many keywords are allowed, and whether abbreviations may appear.
THE SKELETON
Section by section
Each block gives you the heading, what it has to accomplish, and the questions that fill it.
1 · about 15% of the abstract
Context
One or two sentences establishing why the question exists. Enough for a reader outside your subfield to follow the next sentence, and no more.
- What does a reader need to know to understand why this study was run?
- Can you say it without citing anything?
- Are you spending three sentences on background you could spend one on?
2 · about 10% of the abstract
Objective
The single sentence that states what the study set out to do. This is the sentence readers quote when they describe your paper to someone else.
- Does your objective sentence contain a verb like examine, test, compare, or estimate?
- Does it name the population or material studied?
- Does it match the research question in the paper word for word in substance?
3 · about 20–25% of the abstract
Methods
Design, participants or materials, and the analytic approach — compressed. A reader should be able to classify your study type from this alone.
- What is the design, in two or three words?
- How many participants, samples, texts, or sites, and from where?
- Which single analytic method is worth naming?
4 · about 30% of the abstract
Results
The findings that answer the objective, with the key numbers. This is where most abstracts go vague and lose readers.
- What is the main quantitative or qualitative result, with its magnitude?
- Which secondary result changes how the main one should be read?
- Have you written “results are discussed” instead of reporting a result?
5 · about 15–20% of the abstract
Conclusion
What the findings mean, stated at a strength the results support. One sentence of implication is usually enough.
- What can a reader now do or believe that they could not before?
- Is the verb here stronger than the evidence — “demonstrates” where “suggests” is honest?
- Does the conclusion answer the objective you stated?
6
Keywords
Terms that help indexing services and readers find the paper. Choose words that are not already in the title, so the two together cover more ground.
- Which terms does your field use that are absent from your title?
- Does your target journal require terms from a controlled vocabulary such as MeSH?
- Would a researcher in a neighboring field search for any of these?
SENTENCE STARTERS
Phrasing you can adapt
Lift these and change the specifics. Academic phrasing is a shared convention, not something each writer has to reinvent.
X is widely used in Y, yet its effect on Z remains unclear.
Recent work has raised the question of whether …
Assessments of X typically rely on Y, which is costly and slow.
The relationship between X and Y has been debated for …
This study examines whether …
We tested the hypothesis that …
The aim of this paper is to compare …
Here we estimate the extent to which …
X was associated with a … increase in Y.
Participants in the X group outperformed … by …
No reliable difference emerged between …
Three themes were identified: …
These findings suggest that …
The results indicate a need to reconsider …
This provides preliminary evidence that …
Taken together, the results support the use of … in …
Questions about the abstract template
When should I write the abstract?
Last. An abstract written before the results exist describes the paper you intended to write, and the mismatch is easy for an editor to spot.
Can I cite sources in an abstract?
As a rule, no. Abstracts circulate detached from the paper, so a citation there has no reference list behind it. The rare exception is when your study directly replicates one named study.
Should the abstract include numbers?
In quantitative work, yes — a specific effect size or percentage is far more useful than “a significant difference was found.” In qualitative work, the equivalent is naming the themes rather than counting them.
What is the difference between an abstract and an executive summary?
An abstract helps a reader decide whether to read the paper; an executive summary substitutes for reading it. Summaries are longer, recommendation-led, and written for decision-makers rather than researchers.
Can I reuse my abstract for a conference submission?
Often, but rarely unchanged. Conference abstracts are judged on fit with the call and usually want more emphasis on what the audience will see in the session.
Related templates
Research Paper Outline
You are writing an empirical paper for a journal or a graduate course and you want the structure settled before you draft a paragraph.
Conference Abstract
A call for papers closes soon and you need to describe work that may not be finished, in a form a review panel will score against a rubric.
Thesis Outline
You have a supervisor, a topic, and a submission date, and you need to see the whole thesis as chapters before you start writing any of them.
Journal Cover Letter
Your manuscript is ready and the submission system is asking for a cover letter addressed to an editor you have never met.
An outline is a start
Plan mode is the rest
Copyeditor’s Plan mode turns a structure like this into sections you produce one at a time, with citations landing in the bibliography as you go.
