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Abstracts

 https://www.winthrop.edu/uploadedFiles/cas/english/AbstractTips.pdf


Now, on to the fundamentals. 


Length, Contents, and Organization


Descriptive abstracts are usually only 100-250 words, so they must be pared down to the essentials. Typically, a descriptive abstract answers these questions: 


Why did you choose this study or project? What did/will you do and how? What did you/do you hope to find? 


(For a completed work) 


What do your findings mean? 


The title should be informative and focused, indicating the problem and your general approach. It’s very fashionable in the humanities to have titles featuring “post-colonic surge”—a catchy phrase, a colon, and then an explanation of the title. While snappy titles may help your abstract be noticed, it’s really what comes after the colon that sells the abstract, so pay attention to it. “All the World’s a Ship: Race and Ethnicity in Moby Dick ” catches the eye, but “Melville’s Deconstruction of Ethnicity in the ‘Midnight, Forecastle’ Episode of Moby Dick ” tells readers much more specifically what you’re promising to deliver. 




Don’t repeat or rephrase your title in the body of the abstract; usually it’s already provided in the heading. Summarize your thesis and conclusions in the abstract, as well as your goals, approach and main findings. Keep bibliographic references to a minimum and embed the information in-text; short abstracts don’t have Works Cited pages or footnotes. 




The abstract should begin with a clear sense of the research question you have framed (and, if the work is completed, with your thesis). Often this is set up as a problem/solution strategy: 




“Although some recent scholars claim to have identified Shakespeare’s lost play Cardenio  that attribution is still not accepted. In this paper I use the records of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, London’s chief publishing organization, to show that the play identified by Charles Hamilton in 1990 is not actually the play Shakespeare’s company mounted in 1613.” It always helps when you identify the theoretical or methodological school that you are using to approach your question or position yourself with in an ongoing debate. This helps readers situate your ideas in the larger conversations of your discipline. For instance, “The debate among Folsom, McGann, and Stallybrass over the notion of database as a genre (PMLA 122.5, Fall 2007) suggests that....” or “Using the definition of data clouds proposed by Johnson-Eilola (2005), I will argue that...”  Finally, briefly state your conclusion. 


“Through analyzing Dickinson’s use of metaphor, I demonstrate that she systematically transformed Watt’s hymnal tropes as a way of asserting her own doctrinal truths. This transformation...” 



There’s an ongoing debate about how much jargon should be included in an abstract. My best advice is to add any technical terms you need, but don’t put in jargon for jargon’s sake or just to make it look like you are an expert (this especially extends to (post)modernizing your words or other typographical excrescences)


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