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Moral of the story:

• Show respect for your readers by not forcing them to read words and phrases
that are the result of your lazy writing.

• Increase the chances of your reviewers accepting your manuscript by simpli-

fying the review process.

• Be obsessed about removing redundancy. I guarantee that redundancy has a
very negative impact on all types of writing.

To learn how to reduce redundancy, read the summary of Chapter 5 at least once a day!

13.20 What should I not mention in my Abstract?

You should try to avoid:

• background information that is too generalist for your readers

• claims that are not supported in the paper

• terms that are too technical or too generic – this will depend on your
audience

• definitions of key terms
• mathematical equations (unless the whole paper revolves around these
equations)

• generic quantifications (e.g. many, several, few, a wide variety ) and the over-

use or unjustified use of subjective adjectives (e.g. innovative, interesting,
fundamental ).
• unnecessary details that would be better located in your Introduction, such as
the name of your institute, place names that readers will not have heard of

• references to other papers. However, if your whole paper is based on

extending or refuting a finding given by one specific author, then you will
need to mention this author's name.