The abstract gives you an occasion to familiarize yourself with the basic issues concerning your topic by reading, or at least skimming one of the sources you've uncovered before you set to work on a draft. Therefore, you should pick something that looks like it will give you basic overview information or that will fill gaps in your knowledge.

How to: An abstract briefly summarizes someone else's writing. It doesn't strive for originality or flair nor does it communicate your opinion. Often, you will simply restate tile overall point an author is making and repeat information in the author's section headings, adding as many explanatory details as you have word space for. The ultimate goal of an abstract is to transmit all of the author's key points and to give your reader some sense of how the text is organized-& how useful it might be to his or her own research. Someone reading your abstract should be able to tell how scholarly is the text you are abstracting- & what information they will find there. It will be important to mention whether your source has a bibliography or index or some other scholarly apparatus that would help other researchers.

Format: Put your name, date, and the assignment in the upper right-hand comer. Cite the article you are abstracting using MLA format (Handbook, pp. 624-44). Once you've done this you needn't repeat the title or the author's name in the body of the abstract. Begin each sentence with a verb that would go with these two words: "The text. . ."