Functions of Abstracts

According to the statement of scholars,abstracts typically serve five main functions.

Firstly,abstracts help readers judge whether they should read the whole article. Readers use abstracts to see whether a piece of writing interests them or relates to a topic they're working on,thus saving them time to read through the whole article. Instead of tracking down hundreds of articles,readers rely on abstracts to decide quickly if an article is pertinent.Meanwhile,readers use abstracts to help them gauge the sophistication or complexity of a piece of writing.If the abstract is too technical or too simplistic,readers know that the article will also be too technical or too simplistic.

Secondly,abstract helps readers and researchers remember key findings on a topic.Even after reading an article,readers often keep abstracts to remind them of which sources support conclusions.Because abstracts include complete bibliographic citations,they are helpful when readers begin writing up their research and citing sources.

Thirdly,abstract helps readers understand a text by serving as a pre-reading outline of key points.Like other pre-reading strategies,reading an abstract before reading an article helps readers anticipate what's coming in the text itself.Using an abstract to get an overview of the text makes reading the text easier and more efficient.

Fourthly,abstracts help index articles for quick recovery and cross-referencing. Even before computers made indexing easier,abstracts helped librarians and researchers find information more easily.With so many indexes now available electronically,abstracts with their keywords are even more important because readers can review hundreds of abstracts quickly to find the ones most useful for their research.Moreover,cross-referencing through abstracts opens up new areas of research that readers might not have known about when they started researching a topic.

Fifthly,abstracts can allow supervisors to review technical work without becoming bogged down in details.Although many managers and supervisors will prefer the less technical executive summary,some managers need to keep abreast of technical work.Research shows that only 15%of managers read the complete text of reports or articles.Most managers,then,rely on the executive summary or abstract as the clearest overview of employees'work.