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Writing abstracts—A basic approach

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Denver, Colorado, U.S.

Corresponding author: kmahrer@do.usbr.gov

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

I am writing this article in a state of irritation. I am irritated because I just read a GEOPHYSICS manuscript that left me (and fellow reviewers) with the unhappy feeling that the abstract was insufficient and needed to be redone. We gave specific suggestions and guidelines, which included Landes' useful and often-reprinted article (1951, 1966, 1990 AAPG Bulletin) and my more pedestrian TLE article (1993). I have reread those articles and, frankly, I cannot understand how after reading them, authors continue to miss the point about abstracts. What's the problem? Abstract writing is not a mystery!

Why should you care about abstracts? After all, if an abstract is weak, the article is right behind, making up for the abstract's deficiencies and filling in the blanks. No, no, and a thousand times no! Abstracts should not be written to be propped up by the article; abstracts are standalones. Their initial stop is at the front of the article, but later they journey, alone to many other stops, specifically databases. With the advances of databases, the . . . [Full Text of this Article]