Writing Titles and Abstracts

The title and abstract are very important parts of your presentation because they disclose the basic information that the presentation will cover and help potential attendees to decide if they will come to hear your presentation or not.

The title you give your presentation is very important because it is the first impression that you make on your potential audience. While it should attract attention, it should also be informative. In reality, the title may be the most notable phrase that you write. You should choose the most precise words possible that indicate the main point of your presentation topic.

So how do you come up with a title? One possible technique involves writing down the objectives of your research and, from those objectives, write a rough title (called the working title). Write and revise your abstract and then check to see if the title is appropriate and revise it if necessary. You need to make sure that your title will make sense to someone who is not very familiar with your subject. The title should contain the same types of key words that you would use as tags for bookmarking. Look at your revised title to see if it contains unnecessary words and make sure the most important words are early in the title. You also don't want your title to be too long. A length might be 8-12 words (not a hard rule). Remember, you are not writing a a sensational newpaper headline! Your readers want information. Take a look at some versions of a title that might be used for a scientific study done on bollworms along with a critical review of each title.

The Abstract

Abstracts are used in two different situations. The first is below the title and author of a scholarly paper, and the second is in the program of presenters (or proceedings) of a scholarly meeting or conference. In both cases the abstract serves as a short introduction to the subject being presented. The person reading the abstract wants to know whether the subject will be of enough interest to read the entire paper, view the poster or listen to the talk. No matter how vague or specific the title of the work, there is never enough information given about the content to answer that question. While the title is intended to spark interest, the job of the abstract is to fan the flame enticing the person to want to know more. That being said, you don't want to give away so much information that the person does not need to view the entire work. You want to whet the person's appetite to learn more.

The abstract that is required to accompany a written paper by most scholarly journals is generally written after the text of the paper has been completed while the abstract for a scholarly presentation is often generated months before the actual conference (the exercise you are having to do!) This means that you might use a different type of abstract for each application. There are two commonly used types of abstracts: the descriptive abstract and the informative abstract.

The descriptive abstract provides a description of the main topic of the paper or presentation, highlighting its purpose and contents. This type of abstract is typically quite short and does not summarize facts or conclusions. It resembles a paragraph made from the first-level headings of a table of contents. Here is an example of a descriptive abstract written for a paper entitled "Report on Light Water Nuclear Reactors". Note how the abstract identifies the purpose of the report, and what it contains.

The informative abstract provides a lot more of the information found in the body of the report than a descriptive abstract. It will include the objectives of the research; a justification for carrying out the project; the basic methods used; the results; and any significant conclusions that can be drawn. This abstract should be a technical, concise and complete overview of the presentation or paper. It resembles what you would get if you highlighted all the important points in the body of the paper or presentation and then combined them into a short document.

No matter the type of abstract, in general, informative abstracts are longer than descriptive abstracts, typically about 3-5% of the length of the paper. A descriptive abstract is useful for the conference attendee to help determine whether or not to come to your presentation, but it does not divulge enough detail to substitute for hearing the presentation. An informative abstract gives enough information that one can get the gist of your work without reading the full paper or attending the talk. You will be preparing a descriptive abstract for your Academic Excellence presentation.

Abstracts for oral presentations are typically limited to 80-250 words depending on the conference. At first it sounds great that you have such a short piece to write. However, you will find that it is actually a bit of a challenge to present all the pertinent information with so few words! For this reason you will need to write and often rewrite several times to get it right. The challenge will be to choose your words wisely and avoid some of those superfluous phrases that we tend to use automatically (read about jargon that can be avoided).

References:

Cain, B.E.;The Basics of Technical Communicating; ACS Professional Reference Book/
The American Chemical Society:Washington, D.C.,1988
Davis, M; Scientific Papers and Presentations; Academic Press:San Diego, CA,1997
Online Technical Writing: Abstracts. http://www.io.com/~hcexres/textbook/abstrax.html (accessed April 13, 2009).
A Guide to Writing an Abstract. http://www.maa.org/students/writing%20abstracts.pdf (accessed April 13, 2009)