2007 - 2011 Plan of Work

Writing 250-word abstracts for POW issue papers

Kyle McCaskill, Extension Communications Leader/Editor

The issue paper guidelines instructed you to address six major questions in the narrative:

What is the scope of the issue area?

What is the current situation?

What are the societal impacts and consequences if the issue area is not addressed?

What changes need to be made that would improve the situation?

What programmatic or corrective actions could produce these changes?

Who else is addressing this in Maine?

If you have followed the instructions and clearly addressed these six questions in order, your abstract-writing process will be fairly simple.

Write your abstract last, after your issue paper is written, self-edited, rewritten, reviewed by someone else and edited again. In 250 words, you can write roughly two sentences about each of the above questions, and one concluding sentence. Address the questions in the same order they appear in your issue paper. Be crisp, precise and brief.

The best way to go about this is to write the six questions down on a sheet of paper. Keeping the questions in mind, read your entire issue paper. Use a highlighter to mark key concepts. Now, put the issue paper away, and write a rough abstract, summarizing the key elements of your answers to the six questions in narrative form. Put it aside for a day.

Go back and pare your abstract down to two average-length sentences per question, or about 250 words. Eliminate redundancies; simplify sentences; substitute shorter, more familiar words for complicated words and awkward phrases. (A great tool for choosing simpler words is available from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at http://www.ianr.unl.edu/excite/IANR/impt-word.pdf.) The order of the six questions, if you follow it, will ensure that the ideas flow sensibly.

Things to keep in mind:

The abstract must be a coherent paragraph that can stand alone.
The abstract may be all the information some readers gets about this issue. (They may not read your issue paper.)
Consider who your audience is. Write to them.
Write at 8th- to 10th-grade level.
Write in plain, everyday language.
Use short, familiar words.
Write in short, simple sentences.
Avoid jargon and “Extensionese.”

To contact the Plan of Work Task Force, send emails to the Plan of Work Task Force login or powc@umext.maine.edu

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