Writing the perfect Eldis document summary

Imagine you are a researcher or policy maker, looking at a document summary on the internet or in an e-mail.  What do you need to know about the document?

An average Eldis user might want to know:

• how it fits into what they already know
• If it offers anything new or different
• what changes to current thinking it suggests
• what it will help them to do
  

But think also about who specifically your document is aimed at. If you write for your audience you will get better results.

Tips on writing for Eldis users

There's a lot of literature available on writing for the web but a few specific points about Eldis to consider are:

• the abstract will be read on screen and will be e-mailed to subscribers
• internet users generally are notoriously impatient - ours are no different
• Eldis users are generally busy people that want information fast
• Eldis users generally know something of  their subject – they don’t need general introductions. They don’t want to read something they already know.
  

Writing the summary

When writing an abstract, the best places to look in the document are its own abstract (if available: but note that author abstracts don't always include conclusions), executive summary, introduction and conclusions sections.

Purpose
The aim here is to tell the user, as briefly as possible, whether they should read the whole document. We expect different types of documents to require different types of abstract, for example policy briefings will be different from practical manuals.

Length
About 400 words. More if there is a complicated/multiple messages. The abstract will be read on screen or an in e-mail, not in a book so it needs to be short.

Style

• the focus of the abstract is the conclusion of the paper not the introduction which is usually well known general information. What does the paper actually say? What are its recommendations and conclusions?
• write as clearly and as simply as possible bearing in mind that English is not the first language of many of our users
• keep sentences short and don’t use unnecessary words eg. adjectives, adverbs
• don’t repeat ideas or concepts
• remove advertising by the author/publisher eg "This is the most important paper on this subject for the last ten years…."
• write in the present tense
• write as third person, rewrite personal pronouns, eg author's "we then looked at,,," Instead say "the article looks at" or "looks at"
• break into short paragraphs, each focused on a concept. Subdivide these using bullet points to bring out conclusions of research.
• highlight using bold not italics