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13.21 What kinds of words do referees not want
to see in an Abstract?
You should try to avoid words and phrases that add no value for the reader. Typically:

• words that are not concrete, particularly abstract nouns ( 5.4 )

• expressions that are vague ( 6.7 )
Adjectives, too, can create problems – interesting, challenging, vital, fundamental,
innovative, cutting-edge . What exactly do these words means? Can you be sure that
the referee will understand why something is interesting and thus agree that is interest-
ing ? You cannot throw these words into your Abstract hoping that referees will under-
stand your level of excitement. Much better is to avoid these adjectives completely,
and to clearly demonstrate why and how something is interesting or challenging.

If you read on a CV that a candidate describes herself as having 'excellent commu-
nication skills', do you believe her even if she provides no evidence in her CV of
such excellence? No, you don't. You simply think to yourself "everyone says they
have good communication skills, it means nothing". The same is true of any claims
you make in your abstract – don't simply tell your readers that something is "funda-
mental", show them how it is fundamental, convince them.

13.22 What are some of the typical characteristics of poor

abstracts?
The following abstract, from a fictitious (though containing real data) paper entitled

An innovative methodology for teaching English pronunciation, has a series of
problems.
The English language is characterized by a high level of irregularity in spelling and pronuncia-
tion. A computer analysis of 17,000 English words showed that 84% were spelt in accordance
with a regular pattern, and only 3% were completely unpredictable [Hanna et al, 1966] . An
example of unpredictability can be found in English numbers, for example, one, two and eight .
Interestingly, English spelling a thousand years ago was much more regular and almost pho-
netic. Words that today have a similar spelling but radically different pronunciation, such as
enough, though, cough, bough and thorough , once had different spellings and much more pho-
netic pronunciations. In this paper, a pioneering method, developed by the English For
Academics Institute in Pisa (Italy), of teaching non-native speakers how to quickly learn
English pronunciation is presented and discussed.