American National standard for writing abstracts

An abstract is defined as an abbreviated, accurate representation of a document which should be published with it and which is also useful in secondary publications and services. Make the abstract as informative as the nature of the document will permit, so that readers can decide, quickly and accurately, whether they need to read the entire document. State the purpose, either in that order or with initial emphasis on findings (results and conclusions). Make each abstract self-contained since it must be intelligible without reference to the document itself.