You may think that 'writing the abstract' simply involves summarising your work and believe there is little more to it. But not all abstracts are created equal. Writing abstracts that are technically sound is relatively easy, writing amazing abstracts is not as straightforward. Many philosophers across history have commented on the art of brevity. Mark Twain, Voltaire, Blaise Pascal, Winston Churchill, Cicero, and Benjamin Franklin have all, in one place or another, been claimed to have noted "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." Some of the attributions are clearly spurious, but several are supported by solid evidence and underline the observation by our august peers that being succinct takes effort.
As with the above authors, you need to think what posterity might think of your contribution to science when writing your abstract. It is very possible that your brief summary will remain findable and available for reading long after your symposia posters have been forgotten and your beautifully constructed manuscript have been buried by time. Internet search engines, online databases and ready retrieval systems mean that anyone can (and will) find and read your abstract. Manuscript abstracts, for example, will continue to emerge from carefully constructed and broadly executed search strategies for decades to come – perhaps even longer. As such, they will form a major aspect of your scientific legacy, available for scrutiny and comparison long after you have stopped active research (possible even active breathing).
In our latest Insider's insight we hope to convince you that an abstract is not simply a short, standalone, easy-to-follow overview of your work [1]. A well-written abstract facilitates understanding of the main thrust of your research and allows readers to decide quickly whether they want to include your work in their upcoming congress. As William Shakespeare's character Polonius notes in the play 'Hamlet' "Brevity is the soul of wit," where wit referred not so much to humour but more intelligence. Perhaps ironically, Hamlet was Shakespeare's longest play. Follow our guidance and hopefully your past work will not return to haunt you with regret like Hamlet's ghost. Our advice is not only for those young scientists to whom the task of drafting the abstract is often allocated. When you share your work with your colleagues and peers it will likely inspire much critical scrutiny and misinterpretation - be careful not to let their edits, additions and modifications to dilute the abstract's message. We would also want to avoid complex philosophical and ethical issues or feelings of cold-blooded murder, calculated revenge, and thwarted desire!
If you are still wondering just who is recorded as first observing that shorter letters take longer to write, the answer is the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal [2, 3, 4]. The statement appeared in a letter in a collection called “Lettres Provinciales” in the year 1657: "Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." A rough 'modern' translation might read: "I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter," where the term “this” refers to the letter itself. An English translation was created in 1658 and published in London, attracting much comment an attention, the rest the say is history!
Did you miss our Insider's Insight into understanding the complex world of bibliometrics [1]?
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