An abstract is the paragraph of a paper that gets read without the paper: by the marker before page one, by the database that indexes it, and by the searcher deciding whether to open it. EdCitation wrote this guide on how to write an abstract for an essay, a report, a lab report or a journal article. A thesis has its own rules in how to write a dissertation abstract, and a call for papers in how to write a conference abstract.
On 26 September 2026 we read APA Style's abstract pages; the author guidelines of PLOS ONE, Nature, eLife, PeerJ, The Historical Journal and Modern Intellectual History; and writing guides from UNC Chapel Hill, George Mason, USC, Toronto, McGill and Texas A&M. On what an abstract should contain they barely differ; on length, citations, "I" and headings they part ways.
The brief or the journal has the last word, so read it first. The free Check your paper turns a brief or a journal's instructions for authors into a list of rules, with the abstract's limit among them, while Find sources lets you read the abstracts already published on your topic. No sentence of your abstract is written by EdCitation.
What is an abstract for?
An abstract lets a reader decide whether to read the whole work, and lets an index decide what the work is about. The UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center (n.d.) names those two jobs: selection and indexing.
- The reader. APA calls an abstract a snapshot of a study, shown in database results (American Psychological Association, 2023).
- The index. Published abstracts are mined for the words that index a work (Procter, n.d.).
- The search engine. Google Scholar includes a site only if it shows the full text or the complete author-written abstract, free and without a sign-in (Google Scholar, n.d.).
Because it sits under the title, it need not repeat the title; because it travels without the paper, it must make sense alone.
Should an abstract be informative or descriptive?
Informative, in almost every case. The descriptive kind lists the ground a work covers; the informative kind reports what it found or argued.
| Descriptive abstract | Informative abstract | |
|---|---|---|
| What it gives | Purpose, method, scope | All of that, plus results and conclusions |
| Length | 100 words or less (UNC); 150 or less (USC) | Rarely over a tenth of the work (UNC); 300 to 500 words in the humanities (USC) |
| Can it replace the work? | No | Yes: UNC calls it a surrogate |
Most abstracts are informative (University of Southern California Libraries, 2026), yet the descriptive habit survives as a promise: George Mason's Writing Center (n.d.) warns against openings like "This essay will examine". Even Watts et al. (1986), top of our search below, closes by saying that its explanation and uses "are discussed". Give the explanation instead.
What goes in an abstract, and in what order?
Five moves, in the order the work itself follows: why, what, how, the findings, and their meaning.
| Move | Lab report or research article | Humanities essay |
|---|---|---|
| Why | The literature and the problem | Background to the topic |
| What | Research question and hypotheses | The thesis |
| How | Design, sample and sample size | The theoretical, historical or methodological framework; the evidence |
| Found | The results | The main arguments |
| Means | Implications and applications | Conclusions and why they matter |
The science column is APA's, a sentence or two each (American Psychological Association, n.d.); the humanities column is USC's and UNC's. Layout is in APA 7 paper format, section by section, and the rest of a lab report in how to write an APA research paper or lab report.
How much space each part gets
George Mason gives the only proportions we found for an IMRaD paper: about 25% on purpose, 25% on method, 35% on results and 15% on implications. Texas A&M lets a lab meant to teach a method give the method more room (Texas A&M University Writing Center, n.d.).
Should an abstract be structured under IMRaD headings?
Only if the journal or brief asks. In a structured abstract each part carries a heading. According to the National Library of Medicine (2026), the formats date from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they were meant to help health professionals pick out sound, relevant articles, and the ICMJE now requires them for original research, systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Elsewhere, practice varies:
- eLife discourages subheadings except in medical submissions: Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions, Funding and, for a trial, Clinical trial number (eLife, n.d.).
- PeerJ allows bold subheadings followed by a full stop, as in "Background." (PeerJ, n.d.).
- Nature asks for a single summary paragraph that a scientist in another discipline can follow, with the main conclusions opening on "Here we show" or similar wording (Nature, n.d.).
Unless told otherwise, a student lab report takes one unlabelled paragraph.
How long should an abstract be?
As long as the brief or journal says. APA 7's default is 250 words; the journals we read range from 100 to 500.
| Source | Limit | Citations in the abstract? |
|---|---|---|
| APA 7 | 250 words, or whatever your instructor or journal asks; student papers usually need no abstract | Not addressed |
| PLOS ONE | At most 300 words | No; abbreviations avoided if possible |
| Nature (Articles) | Ideally at most 200 words | Yes, fully referenced |
| eLife | Normally 150 to 200; medical, about 250 | Not stated |
| PeerJ | 500 words (3,000 characters) | No, except a critiqued paper by DOI |
| The Historical Journal | At most 200; title at most 20 words | Not stated |
| Modern Intellectual History | 100 to 150 | Not stated |
Sources: American Psychological Association (n.d.), PLOS ONE (n.d.), Nature (n.d.), eLife (n.d.), PeerJ (n.d.), The Historical Journal (n.d.) and Modern Intellectual History (n.d.).
What the writing guides say for coursework
Mostly 100 to 250 words: 100 to 200 for Toronto's lab reports (University of Toronto, n.d.), up to 200 or 250 at McGill (McGill Library, 2026). USC's 300 to 500 is the outlier. Your brief's number wins.
Which keywords, tense and voice does an abstract use?
The searcher's words, the past for what was done, the present for what it means.
Keywords
APA asks for three to five keywords covering topic, population, method and application, on a line below the abstract labelled Keywords:. None of the six journal pages we read asks for one. Put the terms that matter in the abstract itself, which databases search; run your topic through Find sources to see the vocabulary the field's own abstracts use.
Tense
APA Style's tense table gives the past for method and results ("Participants took a survey"), the past or present perfect for earlier research, and the present for implications and conclusions ("The results indicate") (American Psychological Association, 2022b). So an abstract usually turns to the present near its end; see verb tense in research writing.
Voice and "I"
The guides disagree. APA allows both voices but prefers the active, keeping the passive for cases such as an experimental setup (American Psychological Association, 2026); it wants "I" or "we", not "the author" (American Psychological Association, 2022a). Toronto says to avoid "I" and "we" but still prefer active verbs ("the study tested"). Your brief decides; see academic tone, first person and the passive voice.
What should never go in an abstract?
Anything the paper does not say, and anything a reader needs the paper to understand.
- Information not in the work. UNC and Toronto both rule it out.
- Citations, in most cases. PLOS ONE bans them and UNC warns against referring much to other works; Nature is the exception.
- Undefined abbreviations. PLOS ONE, PeerJ, Nature and Toronto all discourage them.
- A promise instead of a result. "Will examine" and "are discussed" say nothing.
- Evaluation. UNC: an abstract does not review the work.
- A claim the results do not carry. One class's data proves nothing; see hedging and cautious language.
How do I write an abstract, step by step?
Write it last, after everything else, as McGill, Texas A&M and George Mason all advise, then work through these steps.
- Paste the brief or author guidelines into Check your paper and note the abstract's limit and any headings.
- Read three to five published abstracts in your field through Find sources.
- Reverse-outline the paper, one sentence per section, as UNC suggests; in an essay, lift the thesis and topic sentences.
- Order those sentences as the paper runs, a sentence or two per move.
- Set the tenses: past for what was done and found, present for what it means.
- Cut citations, abbreviations, promises and anything the paper does not say.
- Check every number against the Results.
- Count as the brief counts, then add keywords if asked.
What does a good abstract look like?
We wrote all four examples ourselves. The lab report and its numbers are invented for teaching; the essay is imaginary, though its details of the novel are checked against the 1818 text.
A lab report abstract, weak then strong
This lab report is about the Stroop effect, which was discovered by Stroop in 1935. We did an experiment on reaction times using colour words. The results are discussed and some limitations are considered. The findings prove that reading is automatic.
History instead of a problem, no sample or result, a promised discussion, and proof claimed from one class.
Naming the ink colour of a word is slower when the word names a different colour, an interference effect often taken as a sign that reading is automatic. This experiment tested whether the effect would appear in a class sample and whether practice would reduce it. Thirty-two undergraduates named the ink colours of 48 congruent and 48 incongruent colour words in each of two blocks, with naming times recorded by computer. Incongruent words were named more slowly in both blocks, by a mean of 118 ms in the first and 74 ms in the second. The interference therefore replicated but shrank with practice. Because the sample was small and came from one class, the size of the practice effect is an estimate. The results suggest that automatic reading can be partly offset by practice at the naming task.
About 140 words, each move in place, past turning to present.
A humanities essay abstract, weak then strong
Frankenstein is one of the most famous novels ever written. This essay will look at the creature and the books he reads. I will discuss Paradise Lost and other texts. In conclusion, the creature is a very complex character.
A filler opening, a promise, no argument, and a conclusion any essay could reach.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), the creature learns to read from three books found in the woods: Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch's Lives and The Sorrows of Young Werther. This essay argues that the books offer him three incompatible models of a self, and that the novel presents his violence as the failure to choose between them. Reading the creature's narrative in the second volume beside the Miltonic passages it echoes, the essay traces his move from comparing himself with Adam to seeing Satan as the fitter emblem of his condition. It concludes that the novel's interest in education is less a contest of nature and nurture than a study of reading without a guide.
The thesis leads and the conclusion says something. Compare Shohet (2018), from our humanities search, which opens by suggesting the novel "engages Paradise Lost with more consistency and nuance than critics have acknowledged".
How does EdCitation help with an abstract?
For the rules an abstract must meet, we think EdCitation's Check your paper is the strongest place to begin: the journals above ask for anything between 100 and 500 words, and every rule it reads sits beside its source sentence, so a misreading shows at once. It is free, with no account.
Check your paper on a real journal's instructions
Into Check your paper we pasted items 1 to 5 of The Historical Journal's instructions for initial submission, 347 words. Four rules came back:
- Word limit · Abstract: at most 200 words, from "an abstract of not more than 200 words;".
- Word count: at most 10,000 words, from "Please try to keep the length of articles to 10,000 words".
- Line spacing: 2, and Page numbers: yes, from the sentence on double spacing and pagination.
Eight sentences went on its not-checked list, and four points, "a word count, including notes" among them, were in neither list. A second run, on PLOS ONE's abstract section alone, labelled "Not exceed 300 words" as the paper's word count, not the abstract's, and left "Citations" out of both lists. Check each rule's label, and read the instructions through yourself.
Find sources: how published abstracts read
Find sources covers roughly 300 million published works, free. "Stroop interference colour word naming" returned 4,036; of the first 100, 33 showed no abstract and 15 began with a label such as "BACKGROUND:", the mark of a structured one. "Frankenstein creature reading Paradise Lost" returned 1,013, one of them an edition whose record held a table of contents in place of an abstract, so open the source itself. From Shohet's DOI, Cite a source built this APA 7 entry, with no retraction reported:
Shohet, L. (2018). Reading Milton in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Milton Studies, 60(1–2), 157–182. https://doi.org/10.5325/miltonstudies.60.1-2.0157
With Pro or Max
Pro ($8 a month) includes Mechanics QA, which a free account can also run three times a month. It holds the file's font, spacing, margins, title page, headings and reference list to APA 7's student paper, and flags leftover comments, citations, numbers and language. Its page does not mention the abstract page, so check that yourself. With Max ($24 a month) comes Theoretics QA, which sets the paper against its own assignment, quotes you, and rewrites nothing. A year paid at once costs 25% less (Pricing), and no tool promises a mark.
Quick questions
How long should an abstract be?
As long as your brief or journal says. APA 7's default is 250 words; PLOS ONE allows 300 and Modern Intellectual History 100 to 150.
Does an APA 7 student paper need an abstract?
Usually not. APA's guide says student papers do not normally include one, so add an abstract only when your instructor asks for it.
Can an abstract include citations?
Usually not: PLOS ONE bans them. Nature's summary paragraph is fully referenced, so the journal's rule decides.
Can EdCitation write my abstract?
No. EdCitation never writes any part of a paper, the abstract included. What it can do, free, is read your brief with Check your paper so the abstract's limit is on your list before you start.
References
- American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Abstract and keywords guide [PDF]. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/abstract-keywords-guide.pdf
- American Psychological Association. (2022a). First-person pronouns. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/first-person-pronouns
- American Psychological Association. (2022b). Verb tense. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/verb-tense
- American Psychological Association. (2023). Reading and understanding abstracts [PDF]. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reading-abstracts.pdf
- American Psychological Association. (2026). Active and passive voice. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/active-passive-voice
- eLife. (n.d.). eLife author instructions. Retrieved September 27, 2026, from https://elife-rp.msubmit.net/html/elife-rp_author_instructions.html
- George Mason University Writing Center. (n.d.). Writing an abstract. https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/writing-resources/different-genres/writing-an-abstract
- Google Scholar. (n.d.). Inclusion guidelines for webmasters. https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html
- The Historical Journal. (n.d.). Preparing your materials. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/information/author-instructions/preparing-your-materials
- McGill Library. (2026, September 16). Writing lab reports. https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/labreports
- Modern Intellectual History. (n.d.). Preparing your materials. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-intellectual-history/information/author-instructions/preparing-your-materials
- National Library of Medicine. (2026, February 10). Structured abstracts. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/policy/structured_abstracts.html
- Nature. (n.d.). Formatting guide. https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/formatting-guide
- PeerJ. (n.d.). Author instructions. https://peerj.com/about/author-instructions/
- PLOS ONE. (n.d.). Submission guidelines. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines
- Procter, M. (n.d.). The abstract. Writing Advice, University of Toronto. https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/types-of-writing/abstract/
- Shohet, L. (2018). Reading Milton in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Milton Studies, 60(1–2), 157–182. https://doi.org/10.5325/miltonstudies.60.1-2.0157
- Texas A&M University Writing Center. (n.d.). Lab reports. https://writingcenter.tamu.edu/guides/resources/lab-reports.html
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center. (n.d.). Abstracts. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/abstracts/
- University of Southern California Libraries. (2026, June 17). Writing an abstract. Organizing Research for Arts and Humanities Papers and Theses. https://libguides.usc.edu/ah_writing/abstracts
- University of Toronto. (n.d.). The lab report. Writing Advice. https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/types-of-writing/lab-report/
- Watts, F. N., McKenna, F. P., Sharrock, R., & Trezise, L. (1986). Colour naming of phobia-related words. British Journal of Psychology, 77(1), 97–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1986.tb01985.x