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Guideline for Abstract Writing  

According to the National Standard of the People’s Republic of China (GB 6447-86）on Abstract Writing Rules, to improve the writing of abstracts in both Chinese and English, and for contributors’ reference, this Journal Editorial composes requirements as follows:

1 Purpose of writing an abstract

An abstract summarizes the content of the paper, providing readers with information on the academic content so that they can learn about and decide whether to get access to the paper.   

2 Elements of an abstract

1) Purpose--Premises, aims, and tasks of the research, development, and investigation, the scope of vision to be reached.

2) Methods--Principles, theories, conditions, objects, materials, processes, structures, means, equipment, procedures and so on which are in use.

3) Results--Experiment and research results, data, determined relationships, findings, results, performance, etc.

4) Conclusions--Result analysis, research, comparison, evaluation, application, questions to be raised, etc. 

3 Size of an abstract

The size of an abstract is determined by the type of the paper.

However, any type of papers should not have an abstract exceeding the length of 150 words.

The following approaches may be taken to reduce an abstract to the smallest size:

1) Don’t repeat the title of the paper in the first sentence of the abstract.

2) Remove background information or reduce it to the shortest.

  3) Focus only on new information. Remove the past research or reduce it to the shortest.
  4) Exclude the author’s future research plan.

  5) Exclude expressions inappropriate in an abstract, such as,

   “The research work described in this paper ranks among the first of ....”

   “The research work described in this paper has not yet been reported.”

   “The research work described in this paper is an improvement upon a most recent research.”

6) Don’t repeat the same information.

    The original “at a temperature of250 ℃to300 ℃” should be changed into “at 250~300 ℃” 
    The original “at a high pressure of 1.2 MPa” should be changed into “at 1.2 MPa”

7) Use international unit symbol of quantity for unit of physical quantity (Eg kg for kilogram)

8) Use standard simplified versions for common English terms (Eg. NY forNew York)

9) Remove unnecessary wordings, such as, 

    “A method is described”， 
 “In this work”， 
    “It is reported that”, 
    “This paper is concerned with” ， 
    “Extensive investigations show that”

4 Writing style of an English abstract

To write a good English abstract, one must adhere to the current well-established regulations such as,

1) The sentences must be complete, clear and concise.

2) Use simple sentences. To avoid monotony, one can change the length and structure of the sentences.

3) Use simple past tense to describe the author’s work, for it was done in the past. However, use simple present tense to describe or draw a conclusion.  

4) Avoid the nominal forms of verbs, such as,

Wrong：“measurement of thickness of plastic sheet was made” 

Right：“Thickness of plastic sheet was measured” 

5) Use the correct articles, avoiding redundant use as well as awkward omission, such as,

Wrong: “The pressure is a function of the temperature”; 

Right: “Pressure is a function of the temperature”

Wrong: “Refinery operates…”

Right: “The refinery operates …”  

6) Don’t use long, serial adjectives, nouns or adjectives plus nouns to modify nouns. To improve the case, prepositional phrases or hyphenated nouns in noun phrases can be used to modify head words, thus forming a modifying unit. Take for example,

Awkward expression: “The chlorine containing high melt index-propylene based polymer”

Improved expression: “The chlorine-containing propylene-based polymer of high melt index”

7) Use short, simple, specific and familiar words. Don’t use flowery expressions. 

8）Use active voice instead of passive voice. “A exceeds B” sounds better than “B is exceeded by A”. Active voice can help to avoid too much use of weak verbs such as  “is”, “was”, “are” and “were”.

9）When making a sentence, put the verb close to the subject. Avoid such a sentence as

“The decolorization in solutions of the pigment in dioxane, which were exposed to 10 hr of UV irradiation, was no longer irreversible.”

Instead, the sentence writes as

“When the pigment was dissolved in dioxane, decolorization was irreversible, after 10 hr of UV irradiation.” 

10）Avoid expressions which carry no meaning nor make any sense, such as “specially designed or formulated”, “The author discusses”, “The author studied”, which must be deleted.

11）Never use slangy, non-English sentences. Be cautious in using jargon and colloquialism.

 Don’t use telegraphic style.