How the work was done, the test methods or means of investigation.(College lab reports may not require this part of the abstract.) Why the work was done (the basic problem), the specific purpose or objective, and the scope of the work if that is relevant.It is not a detective story building suspense as the reader hunts for clues, and should not be vague or obtuse in its content. For this reason, it should be crafted to present the most complete and compelling information possible. It is a summary of the essence of a report. The abstract is an overview that provides the reader with the main points and results, though it is not merely a listing of what the report contains. When you include specific content, it is important to remember these readers are looking for the information they need to make decisions. The abstract is a crucial part of your report as it may be the only section read by people at the executive or managerial level who must make decisions based on what they read in your abstract. The primary resources for the editing process were Paul Anderson’s Technical Communication: A Reader-Centered Approach (6th ed.) and the existing OWL PowerPoint presentation, HATS: A Design Procedure for Routine Business Documents.
This resource is an updated version of Muriel Harris’s handbook Report Formats: a Self-instruction Module on Writing Skills for Engineers, written in 1981. Writing Letters of Recommendation for Students.
