Abstract¶
The Abstract is a short section at the start of the report. In the Report Templates, it is just before the Table of Contents. It provides an overview of the work that is discussed in the report.
This should be approximately 300 words, which is about 1/2 a page of A4 in 11pt font.
The Abstract should introduce what the project is about and highlight the key outputs of the work.
A common failing is that the Abstract is short, which typically means that it does not provide an overview of the work or it does not highlight the key outputs and results.
The following is not a checklist, but it provides some suggestions for you to consider:
If there is a name for the piece of software that you have developed, state that name, e.g. “The AberMarkingAssistant project is …”.
If there isn’t a name for the piece of software, then you could say something like “This report describes…”
Describe the purpose of the work, e.g. what the software helps with or what the research is investigating.
Identify the main technologies used in the work, e.g. programming language, game or application framework.
If the project researched an issue, identify the research hypothesis and the research method.
Identify what approach was used to manage the project.
Describe the key purpose of the software that was developed during the work. If that was used to support research, identify how it was used for the research.
Identify the key findings and outputs of the work.
An Abstract is used by people to decide if a report contains content that might be interesting to read. Don’t worry, your markers will read all of your report. If we choose the project as one example for future years, then the Abstract helps someone to see a quick overview of what was done during the project. That can help them choose if they want to spend more time reading the details in the report.
Write this as one of the final sections. At that point, you know what else you have written in your report, so it is easier to provide an abstraction of the most important elements.
