Chicago style abstracts

This guide tells you everything you need to know about abstracts in Chicago style. If your thesis or dissertation needs an abstract, this page will help you to write one. The information provided here follows the guidelines outlined in the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) and the 9th edition of A Manual for Writers (Turabian) but is not officially linked to either of these guides.

Here’s what you’ll find on this page:

• What is an abstract?
• How do you format an abstract in Chicago style?
• What are keywords and how do you use them in Chicago style abstracts?

For help writing your essay, research paper, or other project, check out these writing tips.

What is an abstract?

Abstracts are typically required when you write a thesis or dissertation. You might need to provide an abstract for a longer research paper, an academic article, or a book. An abstract is a short summary of the contents of your thesis, dissertation, research paper, academic article, or book. It helps readers know what your text is about so they can decide if they think your work will be helpful to their research. An abstract should be concise and report what your project set out to do, as well as state the results of your project.

Typically, you should only write your abstract after you have written your entire text. This is because your project may change as you write and do research. You want your abstract to reflect your project in actuality, not what you intended it to be. Your abstract should also only include information that the reader will find in your text, so make sure not to include any new information that is not mentioned in your document.

An abstract should contain the following information:

• Your research question or problem statement
• Your goals and objectives for the project
• Your methods for answering your research question/problem statement and attaining your goals/objectives
• Your key findings or arguments
• Your conclusion

Essentially, your abstract should detail the most important parts of your paper. It will vary somewhat based on your academic field and the type of research you are conducting. For example, if you are writing in the humanities, your research might be a close analysis of a literary work. If you are writing in the social sciences, you might be conducting quantitative research.

In the first part of your abstract, you should address your research question or problem statement. Identify what is missing in current research or the question you hope to answer.

Next, tell your reader what your text is going to do. What are you going to evaluate or analyze in your paper?

Now, you can describe how you answered your question or addressed your problem statement. Again, your methodology will vary based on your field of study. You might conduct a study, or you might study a piece of art in its historical context.

Then, you can transition to describing your findings or results. What did your research find? What did your study show?

Finally, state your conclusion. Here, you should state the importance of your results or argument. Why is your work important and why is it relevant to your field of study?

Here’s an example of what an abstract might look like for a research paper:

At the end of the semester, students often face extreme stress due to exams, papers, and final projects. Research has shown that animals can help to reduce stress. This study aims to determine if therapy animals on campus can help students to feel less stressed. It also investigates whether a particular animal is better at alleviating stress. More specifically, it seeks to find out whether puppies, kittens, ponies, or bunnies can reduce student stress and if one of these animals limits stress more effectively than the others. To determine if animals play a role in reducing student stress, therapy puppies, kittens, ponies, and bunnies were brought to the campus library of University ABC during the final week of the semester. The event was advertised heavily through social media and students were encouraged to attend. Surveys were distributed to attending students before and after the event. Students were asked to describe their stress levels before and after visiting with the animals. They were also asked which type of animal they spent the most time with. The results showed that students felt somewhat less stressed after interacting with the therapy animals. There was no clear preference between animals. The results of this study suggest that universities can help lessen student stress through the use of therapy animals. Because of this, universities should consider bringing therapy animals on campus during the final week of each semester to help students cope with stress.

If you need more help writing an abstract, you can start by reading other abstracts from published articles or papers. Many journal articles include abstracts, as well as most dissertations and theses you can find in databases like the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database.

How do you format an abstract in Chicago style?

In Chicago style, an abstract comes after the title page and the copyright page. This means that it should be labeled as page iii of your text. It comes right before your table of contents. All the pages of your abstract should be numbered, but an abstract generally should not exceed one page. You’ll need to label the page at the top with “Abstract” in italics. You’ll then leave two blank lines before the text of your abstract begins. Make sure to double space your abstract and use the same formatting (e.g., font and font size) as the rest of your text.

While an abstract is generally about 150 to 300 words, different institutions typically have different rules. For a book, abstracts are typically 500 words or less. Make sure to find out the guidelines set by your institution and follow them. Abstracts tend to have very strict word counts, so be careful not to exceed the limit.

What are keywords and how do you use them in Chicago style abstracts?

Abstracts are often accompanied by a list of keywords. Keywords are terms that are used to describe the contents of the thesis, dissertation, research paper, or article. They are single words (like stress) or accepted compounds (like therapy animal). Keywords help readers to find your text through searches on the internet or online catalogs.

You should make sure that your keywords address the most important points of your text so that readers who are interested in your topic will easily be able to find your work. Keywords are often printed on the line after your abstract. In certain cases, such as with abstracts for books, the keywords may not appear with the abstract, but are often used by publishers and librarians in metadata to help your readers find your work online.

Bibliography:

The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.https://doi.org/10.7208/cmos17.

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 9th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.