ABSTRACTS AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. ABSTRACT
 A brief summary of a book, article or formal speech
 Reports the aims and outcomes of your research so that readers know
what your paper is about.
 Includes the methods you’ve used
 IMRAD structure is the common way of structuring an abstract
o Introduction
o Methods
o Results and
o Discussion
 Usually, 100-300 words
 We write abstracts when:
o Completing a thesis or dissertation
o writing a book or research
o applying for research grants
 abstracts reflect the info contained in the larger work in brief
 avoid repetition and detailed description in abstracts just be brief
 an abstract is written so that readers know the relevancy of your paper
or book
 It must be in a single paragraph, in past tense, brief, accurate and you
can use bullets and numbers but do not use examples
2. Executive summary
 This is a brief summary of a report mainly used for business
purposes
 It is also found at the beginning of the report and is a brief
standalone passage
 It is longer than an abstract and it contains main points from the
main passage
 It is used to persuade decision makers to read the main work
 An executive summary has to contain:
o Goals of the executive summary whereby it states its solutions
to the problem at hand and its value or worth
o Background of the problem at hand by explaining a little about
the problem
o It is written in more than one paragraph
o Should also include the solutions that you’ve discovered and
the conclusion and recommendations too
o Must use formal language
o It must also be 10% of the total report