Lists some of the major typographic variables involved in structured abstracts (containing sub-headings). Illustrates how typography can affect clarity by presenting seven examples that illustrate the effects of these typographic variables in practice. Concludes with a final example of an effective approach. (SR)

Describes a study of 77 abstracts in English language medical journals that was conducted to examine the internal structuring of the abstracts. A form for structured abstracts is described, the importance of abstracts in medical journals is discussed, and structural flaws in the abstracts studied are described. (24 references) (LRW)

Describes the results of an analysis of 87 non-formulaic abstracts for structures of semantic dependency between sentences. An automatic structural simplification is presented which is based on an assumption about the use of the dependency structure, and the results of an evaluation of the method are discussed. (25 references) (CLB)

An investigation was undertaken into the possibility of automatically detecting how concepts exist in relation to each other in abstracts, a text-type commonly used in free-text retrieval. The end goal of this research is to capture these relationships in structured representations of abstracts' contents so that users can require not only that the…

Investigates the feasibility of using sub-headings similar to those found in structured abstracts to facilitate the writing and reading of scientific papers. Claims the use of sub-headings: (1) forces the writer to make sure no issue is forgotten; and (2) enables the reader to search for and find information more easily. (NH)

Investigates how structural variables influence readers' construction of meaning. Finds that textual variables operate differently depending on the extent of the readers' background knowledge and linguistic competence. Shows that variable such as exposure to reading materials (in both first and second languages), background knowledge, and…

Experimental subjects wrote abstracts of an article using a simplified version of the TEXTNET abstracting assistance software; subjects were presented with either keywords or phrases extracted automatically. Results showed considerable variation among subjects, but 37% found the keywords or phrases "quite" or "very" useful in…

Describes the design and implementation of a system for creating highlight abstracts to select relevant online magazine articles. Explains parsing texts based on text grammar and extracting sentences and statements that are relevant for inclusion in the abstract; and discusses knowledge representation and the importance of discourse structures in…

Investigates whether information abstracts reporting on empirical work possess a predictable discourse-level structure and whether there are lexical clues revealing this structure. Results support the presence of a detectable structure in the text-type of empirical abstracts, which may be of use in a variety of text-based information processing…

Discussion of academic bibliographic instruction highlights an exercise in developing critical reading skills by reading and effectively reviewing ERIC abstracts. Topics include rhetoric and writing-based approaches in bibliographic instruction, sentence structure, text assessment, and automated bibliographic tools and interpreting text on a…