Also known as abstract and content summary. It is a short article, which concisely and accurately describes the important contents of the literature, without comments or supplementary explanations. Its basic elements include research objectives, methods, results and conclusions. Specifically, it is the main object and scope of research work, the means and methods adopted, the achievements and important conclusions obtained, and sometimes other important information with intelligence value. It should be self-evident and have the same amount of information as the literature, that is, you can get the necessary information without reading the full text. A complete paper needs an abstract. The main functions of the abstract are:

1) Let readers know the main contents of the paper as soon as possible to supplement the deficiency of the topic. Modern scientific and technological literature information is vast, whether readers will read the full text after searching the title of the paper is mainly judged by reading the abstract; Therefore, the abstract is responsible for attracting readers and introducing the main contents of the article to readers.

2) It provides convenience for the construction and maintenance of scientific and technological information literature retrieval database. After the paper is published, abstract magazines or various databases can directly use the abstract without modification or slight modification, thus avoiding misunderstandings, deficiencies and even mistakes that may occur when others write the abstract. With the rapid development of computer technology and Internet, online query, retrieval and download of professional data has become an important means of scientific and technological information retrieval. Various full-text databases and abstract databases on the Internet are increasingly showing the level and development trend of information exchange in modern society. At the same time, the index of abstracts is an important tool for readers to retrieve documents. Therefore, the quality of paper abstracts directly affects the retrieval rate of papers.

2. Matters needing attention in writing

1) What has become common sense in this field should be excluded from the abstract; Never write what should appear in the introduction into the abstract; Generally don't interpret and comment on the content of the paper (especially self-evaluation).

2) Don't simply repeat the existing information in the topic. For example, if the title of an article is "Study on Rhizome Formation in Vitro Culture of Several Orchids from China", then don't write at the beginning of the abstract: "For.

3) Rigorous structure, concise expression and exact semantics. What to write first, then what to write, should be arranged in logical order. Sentences should be coherent and echo each other. Use long sentences with caution and keep them as simple as possible. Every sentence should be clear, and there should be no vague, general or vague words, but the abstract is a complete essay after all, and telegraph writing is not enough. The abstract is not segmented.

4) Use the third person. It is suggested that the description methods such as "under study", "reporting the present situation" and "under investigation" should be used to indicate the nature and theme of the literature at one time, and it is not necessary to use "this article" and "author" as subjects.

5) Standardized terms should be used instead of symbols and terms that are not well known and commonly used. If there are new terms or no suitable Chinese terms, you can indicate the original text in brackets or after translation.

6) In addition to being really inflexible, mathematical formulas and chemical structural formulas are generally not used, and there are no illustrations and tables.

7) Don't quote other people's published works unless the literature confirms or denies them.

8) Abbreviations, abbreviations and codes must be explained when they first appear, except those that can be clearly understood by adjacent professional readers. Other matters that should be paid attention to when writing scientific papers, such as adopting legal units of measurement, using language and punctuation correctly, are also applicable to the preparation of abstracts. At present, the main problems in writing are: incomplete elements, or lack of purpose, or lack of methods; Citation is not independent and self-evident; Improper simplification.

3 English abstract

What we want to discuss here is mainly the English abstracts attached to Chinese scientific papers, including titles, abstracts and keywords.

GB 77 13-87 stipulates that scientific and technological reports, dissertations and academic papers should be accompanied by abstracts in foreign languages (mostly English) for international communication. In principle, the above precautions in writing Chinese abstracts are all applicable to English abstracts, but English has its own expressions and language habits, so special attention should be paid when writing English abstracts.

3. 1 English title

1) title structure. Phrases are the main forms of English titles, especially noun phrases, that is, titles are basically composed of 1 nouns and their prepositional and/or postpositional attributes. For example: common bryophytes in Helan mountain area (Helan mountain bryophytes are very common); Thermodynamic characteristics of water absorption of heat-treated wood. The title of phrase type should determine the head word and then modify it before and after. The order of each word is very important, and improper word order will lead to inaccurate expression. Generally speaking, the title should not be a declarative sentence, because the title mainly plays a marking role, and the declarative sentence is easy to make the title have judgment semantics; Besides, declarative sentences are not concise and eye-catching, and the key points are not easy to highlight. In a few cases (critical, comprehensive and refuting), the question can be used as the title, because the question can have an exploratory tone and easily arouse the reader's interest. For example, can agricultural mechanization be realized without oil? Can agricultural mechanization leave oil? ) 。

2) the number of words in the topic. The title should not be too long. Foreign sci-tech journals generally limit the number of words in titles. For example, the American Medical Association stipulates that the title should not exceed 2 lines and each line should not exceed 42 printed symbols and spaces; J Nat Cancer Inst, a magazine of the National Cancer Institute, requires that the title should not exceed 14 words; The British Mathematical Society requires that the topic should not exceed 12 words. These regulations can be used for our reference. The general principle is that the titles should be exact, concise and eye-catching, and the fewer the titles, the better under the premise of accurately reflecting the specific content of the paper.

3) Consistency of Chinese and English titles. The English title and Chinese title of the same paper should be consistent in content, but it does not mean that the words should correspond to each other. In many cases, individual non-material words can be omitted or changed. For example, the direct heat calculation of industrial wet steam and the direct measurement of heat transfer wet steam. The literal translation of the English title is "directly measuring the heat transferred by wet steam" Compared with Chinese titles, although there are differences in terms, the content is the same.

4) The article in the title. In the early years, articles in the titles of scientific papers were widely used, but in recent years, there is a trend of simplification, and articles that can or cannot be used can be used. For example, the influence of groundwater quality on output and quality. The article "the" in both places can be omitted.

5) Cases in the title. There are three formats for the title letters.

All letters are capitalized. Example: Optimal configuration of roller chain drive.

The first letter of each word is capitalized, but articles, conjunctions and prepositions with less than three or four letters are lowercase. For example, the deformation and strength of a defective concrete dam.

The first letter of the word 1 in the title is capitalized, and the rest letters are lowercase. For example, topological inversion of interval velocity.

At present, B. format is the most widely used, and C. format has an increasing trend.

6) Abbreviations in titles. Abbreviations that have been recognized by the whole scientific and technological community or technicians in this industry can only be used in titles, otherwise they should not be used easily.

3.2 English translation between the author and the author unit

1) author. China's name is spelled in Chinese Pinyin; The names of other non-English speaking countries are spelled according to the Roman alphabet provided by the author himself.

2) unit. The company name should be written in full name (from small to large), with address and postal code attached to ensure convenient contact. Some time ago, some units and institutions used abbreviations in English translation, which was confusing to outsiders and led to confusion. FAO, WHO and MIT are all famous, and BFU is Beilin University, so I'm afraid it's only known in the "circle". In addition, the English translation of the unit must adopt the unified translation method of the unit (that is, the standard translation method of the unit) and must not start from scratch.

3.3 English abstract

1) English abstract tense. The use of English abstract tenses is also better to be concise. The present tense and past tense are often used, the present perfect tense and past perfect tense are seldom used, and the continuous tense and other compound tenses are hardly used.

General present tense. It is used to explain the research purpose, describe the research content, describe the results, draw conclusions, make suggestions or discuss, etc. Examples are as follows: This study (investigation) is the anatomy of the stem secondary xylem of Davidia involucrata and Camptotheca acuminata (Camptotheca acuminata). Is comparison. The results show (reveal) that ... people find that ... The conclusion is that ... The author suggests that ... involves recognized facts, natural laws, eternal truths and so on. Of course, we should also use the simple present tense.

Simple past tense. Used to describe the discovery of a certain time (period) and a certain research process (experiment, observation, investigation, medical treatment, etc.). For example, in July and August of 1996, the trunk sap flow of two main deciduous trees was studied by thermal pulse technique. It should be pointed out that discoveries and phenomena described in the past tense are often not recognized as natural laws and eternal truths, but just as they were at that time; The research process described also has obvious traces of the past.

Present perfect tense and past perfect tense. Use less when you are finished, but you can't help it. The present perfect tense relates what happened or was completed in the past to the present. The past perfect tense can be used to indicate something that was completed before a certain time in the past, or another past behavior that was completed before a past thing was completed. For example, concrete has been studied for many years. Humans have not learned to store solar energy.

2) Voice of English Abstracts. Which kind of voice should be adopted should not only consider the abstract characteristics, but also meet the needs of expression. An abstract is very short, try not to mix it casually, let alone say a word.

Active voice. Nowadays, more and more people advocate that the predicate verbs in the abstract should use the active voice as much as possible, because it helps to use words clearly, concisely and expressively. The author systematically introduces the history and development of population organization training, which has a stronger sense of language than that of population organization training. If necessary, the author systematically deletes it and starts to introduce it directly.

Passive voice. In the past, passive voice was emphasized because scientific papers mainly explained the facts. As for who did it, it was not necessary to prove them one by one. In fact, in the indicative abstract, it is best to use the passive voice in order to emphasize the actors.

Even in the summary of the report, in some cases, the passive person is irrelevant, and the emphasized thing must be the subject. For example, in this case, higher accuracy of measuring distance is possible.

3) Person of English abstract.

The first sentence of the original abstract usually starts with the third person, but now it tends to start with a simpler passive voice or prototype verb. For example, describe …, study …, investigate …, evaluate …, determine …, and develop a flash flood classification model and a dangerous area mapping model based on GIS. It is best not to use the first person when writing, so as to facilitate the editing and publication of abstract publications.

4) Precautions. Some common mistakes should be avoided.

Articles. The main reason is that the definite article The is easily omitted. The is used to express unique things other than the whole group, classification, time and place name. The superlative adjective is easy to master, especially when it is often omitted. There is a principle here that when we use the, the listener or reader already knows exactly what we mean. The author designed a new machine. This machine is driven by solar energy. Because there are more and more abbreviations now, we should pay attention to distinguish between a and an, such as a x-ray Avoid using Arabic numerals as the first word, such as "three hundred" in "collecting three hundred larvae of Dendrolimus punctatus"? Don't write 300

Simple complex number. The singular and plural forms of some nouns are difficult to identify, which leads to errors in predicate forms.

Try to use short sentences. Because long sentences are easy to cause semantic ambiguity; But avoid monotony and repetition. There are many specialties involved in sci-tech periodicals, and English is even more difficult to master. There are differences in expressions, words and sentences in all walks of life. If there is an opportunity, we should contact our counterparts in English-speaking countries and ask them to revise some abstracts or papers written by China people, so as to accumulate experience and explore the rules. If we lack such opportunities, reading more English documents will also help us improve our English writing and level.

4 "EI" basic requirements for English abstracts

4. 1 completeness of English abstract

At present, when writing English abstracts, most authors translate the Chinese abstracts in front of their papers into English. This approach ignores the fact that Chinese readers can get comprehensive and detailed information from the full text of the paper after reading chinese abstracts it, because English readers (such as EI's editors) generally don't understand Chinese, and English abstracts become his only source of information. Therefore, the integrity of English abstracts should be emphasized here, that is, the information provided by English abstracts must be complete. In this way, even if readers don't understand Chinese, they can have a complete understanding of the theme of the paper, the main methods and processes of solving problems, the main results, conclusions, innovations and uniqueness of the article only through English abstracts. Paying attention to quantitative analysis is one of the important characteristics of scientific research. This should also be reflected in the writing of English abstracts. Therefore, when writing English abstracts, we should avoid too general and empty general discussions and conclusions. Try to explain your method, process, results and conclusions in the most specific language in the article, which will not only make readers think clearly, but also make your argument meaningful and well-founded, so that readers can have a clear and comprehensive understanding of your research work. Of course, this does not mean that Chinese abstracts do not need to emphasize completeness. In fact, the information provided by Chinese abstracts must be complete when they are published on the Internet alone or when articles are included in Chinese abstracts journals. In addition, due to the huge differences between eastern and western cultural traditions, China's long-standing traditional education has overemphasized that intellectuals should be "modest and prudent, guard against arrogance and rashness", so China scholars generally do not pay attention to (or dare not) highlight their contributions when writing papers. This is just the opposite of western tradition. When writing papers, western scholars always clearly highlight their contributions, innovations and uniqueness. Western readers always pay special attention to the innovation and originality of papers when reading them, otherwise they think it is not worth reading. Due to the different readers of Chinese and English abstracts, in view of the above two factors, the author thinks that the Chinese and English abstracts in the paper need not be consistent.

4.2 "EI" writing requirements for English abstracts

At present, most of the English abstracts written by the authors are rough, far from meeting the requirements of participating in international exchanges, and need to be greatly revised and sometimes even rewritten. On the one hand, this is due to the author's limited English writing level; On the other hand, most authors are not familiar with the writing requirements and international practices of English abstracts. According to EI's requirements for writing English abstracts, how to write English abstracts of scientific papers is discussed below.

EI China Information Department requires that the information abstract should use concise and clear language (generally no more than 150 words) to describe the "purpose", mainly study the "procedures" and the "methods" adopted. The main "results" and important "conclusions" are clearly expressed. If possible, you should also try to mention the scope and application of the results and conclusions of the paper. In other words, to write a good English abstract, the author must answer the following questions:

1) the purpose of this article or the problem to be solved (what do I want to do? )

2) the method and process of solving the problem (how did I do it? )

3) main results and conclusions (what results have I got and what conclusions can I draw? )

4) Innovation and uniqueness of this article (What is novel and unique about this article? )

4.3 Writing of each part of English abstract

According to EI's requirements for English abstract writing, there is no fixed format for English abstract writing, but generally speaking, English abstract is an accurate and short summary of the original documents, without explanation or comment, and it is required to reflect the main information of the original documents.

4.3. 1 Purpose (What do I want to do? )

Purpose. Mainly explain the author's purpose of writing this article, or the problem that this article mainly solves. Generally speaking, a good English abstract should clearly explain the author's purpose or the main problems to be solved at the beginning. If necessary, the latest literature listed in the paper can be used to briefly introduce the work of predecessors, but this introduction must be extremely concise. In this regard, EI put forward two specific requirements:

1) Eliminate or minimize background information.

2) avoid repeating the title or part of the title in the first sentence of the abstract.

Avoid repeating the topic or part of the topic in the first sentence of the abstract.

4.3.2 Process and method (How did I do it? )

Process and method. This paper mainly explains the author's main working process and methods, and should also include many boundary conditions, main equipment and instruments used. In English abstracts, the elaboration of process and method plays a connecting role. What you want to do at first is how to do it later, and the final results and conclusions are often closely related to the research process and methods. When most authors explain the process and methods, the most common problems are general, empty and empty, only qualitative description, it is difficult for readers to clearly understand the problem-solving process and methods in the paper. Therefore, when explaining the process and method, we should combine (point to) the formula and experimental block diagram in this paper, which can not only give readers a clear idea, but also give English readers who can't understand Chinese (but can understand formulas, charts, tables, etc.). ) a credible feeling.

4.3.3 Results and Conclusions (What results have I got and what conclusions can I draw? )

Results and conclusions represent the main achievements and contributions of this paper. Whether a paper is valuable depends mainly on your results and conclusions. Therefore, when writing the results and conclusions, we should generally try to explain them with charts, tables and curves of experimental results or simulation results to make the conclusions meaningful and well-founded; At the same time, for those English readers who can't read Chinese, the results and conclusions of the paper can be clearly understood through the charts and descriptions of these English abstracts. Only in this way can the conclusion of the paper be convincing. If possible, at the end, you can also compare the results of the paper with the latest research results of others to highlight the main contribution, innovation and uniqueness of the paper (answer what is novel and unique in this paper).

4.3.4 How to improve the writing efficiency of English abstracts

EI attaches great importance to the efficiency of English abstracts. In order to improve writing efficiency, all redundant words and sentences should be deleted as much as possible. In this regard, EI put forward two principles:

1) Limit the abstract to new information.

2) trive for brevity (try to keep the abstract concise). At present, due to the lack of English writing by most authors, the English abstracts written by the authors are far from the requirements of EI. Some authors write long English abstracts, but their writing efficiency is very low, and there are many redundant words and sentences; Some authors write short English abstracts, but there are also redundant words. In short, the information content of the text is less. Therefore, EI Chinese Information Department also put forward the following specific requirements for the writing of English abstracts.

4.3.5 Syntax of English Abstract

Regarding the syntax of English abstracts, EI puts forward the following three general principles:

1) Try to use short sentences.

2) Generally, the past tense is used to describe the author's work (because the work was completed in the past), but the present tense should be used to state the conclusions drawn from these works.

3) Generally, we should use the active voice of verbs. For example, it is better to write A over B than to write B over A. ..