The title and the abstract must work together to give the reader clear, concise information about what you did, what you found, and why it is important. The abstract, as well as the paper itself, should be written in the first person. The "royal 'we'" should only be used, if, in fact, there are multiple authors; otherwise, say "I".

Generally, abstracts (and papers, too) are written in the past tense, since the work has already been completed when the paper is written.

Title: The effects of Vitamin E supplements on manual dexterity in humans. (If you had found that Vitamin E enhances manual dexterity in both tests, you would say so in the title: Vitamin E supplements enhance manual dexterity in humans)

The first sentence of the abstract should introduce the reader to the work: I studied whether doses of Vitamin E taken to reduce the risk of cancer also reduced scores on manual dexterity tests.

The next 2-3 sentences should describe the methods and materials VERY BRIEFLY: I administered the Jones Test of Manual Dexterity and the QT Typing Test to 50 human volunteers taking 100mg of Vitamin E per day. I also tested 50 matched volunteer control subjects.

The next several sentences should summarize your results, one sentence to a result, if possible. The subjects taking vitamin E scored significantly better on the Jones test than did the control subjects. There was no difference between the two groups on the QT test.

The final 2-3 sentences should relate your findings to other work, and summarize the importance of your work. Previous studies of the effects of Vitamin E have only been done using mental ability tests. These studies concur that Vitamin E reduces subjects' mental abilities. My work shows that Vitamin E enhances subjects' manual dexterity. Vitamin E thus appears to have different effects on motor and brain neurons.

Although many writers speculate on the kinds of future experiments that need to be done in the discussion section of the full paper, such speculation should not be part of an abstract. Do not end with "The effects of vitamin E on different kinds of neurons needs to be fully investigated."

General guidelines:

• Use the first person wherever possible. (Use "I" instead of "we" if there is only one author.)

• Use the active voice instead of the passive voice. Always say "I did the experiment" and not "The experiment was done".

• Avoid long, complicated sentences. Limit use of commas, colons and semicolons. Limit use of conjunctions (and, but, or). Break separate thoughts into separate sentences. (Your English professor may call this "choppy", but you are not trying to write literature. You are trying to convey ideas.)

• Avoid noninformative phrases and abbreviations. Do not use "etc." or "and similar observations."

• Avoid repetition. If you said it in the introduction, don't say it again in the results and again in the discussion. Especially avoid repetition in the abstract.

• Keep specialized jargon, and especially abbreviations, to a minimum, especially in the abstract. If you can say the exact same thing in common words, do so. Keep technical terms for use only where absolutely necessary to convey a technical idea.

• If you have results, state them. Say "The data show that Vitamin E enhances manual dexterity.", rather than "It is possible that the observed results of subjects taking manual dexterity tests are due to the effect of administration of Vitamin E." If your statistical tests are significant, then you have actually shown something, and if your tests are nonsignificant, say "Vitamin E does not affect the results of manual dexterity tests."

• Keep nouns, verbs, and adjectives in their traditional roles. Do not succumb to the tendency to use nouns as adjectives ("we kept our data in our radio-collared coyote tracking sheet record book" or nouns as verbs ("birthing" instead of "giving birth".)

• Remember that your goal is to pass information to your reader as efficiently as possible, not to impress her with your ability to write literature.

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