Sunday, December 28, 2008

How do I summarize articles in APA style? Are these called abstracts?

It sounds as if your teacher would like you to write an abstract for each paper. An abstract is a type of summary. Normally, abstracts will include one or two sentences describing each of the following:


  • The purpose of the work.

  • Any background or context information necessary to understand the work. 

  • The methods used to obtain results.

  • The results.

  • The conclusions which can be drawn from the results.

  • Sometimes a statement describing any further work/analysis/experimentation which needs to be done can be included, although this is not necessary in all cases - usually only appears when the results are inconclusive.

As for how to format your summaries, it is not really clear from your teacher's instructions. But I would err on the safe side and format each summary on a dedicated Abstract page following the APA style guidelines. See the link below for more info on formatting. 

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