Page 6 - 2-3-4: The Magic Number for Abstract Writing

Abstracts as an

academic/professional genre

* the synopsis of an article (Bhatia, 1993)

* an advance indicator of the content and structure
of the article, a representation of the article (Swales,

1990) or

* a crystallisation of the whole article (Salager-
Meyer, 1990)

‘a description or factual summary of the much longer

report, and is meant to give the reader an exact and
concise knowledge of the full article’ (Bhatia, 1993,
p. 78)

This information relates what the author(s) did, how

did the author(s) do that, what the author(s) found
out, and lastly, what suggestions or conclusions the

author(s) want to provide.

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