如何写摘要》by Markus Kuhn，译by Tiemeng Li

Having just finished another pile of conference-paper reviews, it strikes me that the single most common stylistic problem with papers in our field is the abstract.

刚刚又审完一堆会议论文，我发现我们这个领域（指计算机）论文写作中普遍存在问题就是摘要的撰写。

 

Disappointingly few Computer Science authors seem to understand the difference between an abstract and an introduction. Far too many abstracts are useless because they read just like the first paragraphs of the “Introduction” section; the separation between the two would not be obvious if there were no change in font or a heading in between.

很多计算机领域论文的作者都分不清摘要(abstract)和介绍(introduction)之间的区别。很多摘要写的都没有意义，因为和第一部分Introduction太像了，如果中间没有标题隔着或者字体没有区别的化，可能几乎分不出来你我。

 

The two serve completely different purposes:

Abstract 和 Introduction 承担完全不同的作用

 

Abstracts are concise summaries for experts. Write your abstract for readers who are familiar with >50% of the references in your bibliography, who will soon have read at least the abstracts of the rest, and who are quite likely to quote your work in their own next paper. Answer implicitely in your abstract experts’ questions such as “What’s new here?” and “What was actually achieved?”. Write in a form that squeezes as many technical details as you can about what you actually did into about 250 words (or whatever your publisher specifies). Include details about any experimental setup and results. Make sure all the crucial keywords that describe your work appear in either the title or the abstract.

Abstract是给专家看的论文工作简明的总结。摘要面向的读者是对论文参考文献一半以上都很熟悉的专家，他们会把其他没读过的文章摘要也快速浏览下来，并且也可能很愿意在自己的文章中引用你的论文。在你的摘要中要回答专家读者几个问题：“有什么创新？”、到底做出了什么？”需要在250words之内描述清楚你做了什么，尽可能压缩技术细节、实验设置及结果。要确保所有能描述你工作的核心关键词出现在你的论文标题及摘要中。

 

Introductions are for a wider audience. Think of your reader as a first-year graduate student who is not yet an expert in your field, but interested in becoming one. An introduction should answer questions like “Why is the general topic of your work interesting?”, “What do you ultimateley want to achieve?”, “What are the most important recent related developments?”, “What inspired your work?”. None of this belongs into an abstract, because experts will know the answers already.

Introductions是写给更宽泛的读者的。比如你的读者有可能是一年级的新生，他们对这个领域并不熟悉，但是很希望深入下去。Introduction需要回答这样几个问题：“你的工作为什么有意思(有意义)？”、“你最终想实现什么目标”，“最近最重要的相关进展是什么”、“什么促使你做这个工作？”。这些内容都不属于摘要的范畴，因为领域专家已经很清楚了。

 

Abstract and introduction are alternative paths into your paper. You may think of an abstract also as a kind of entrance test: a reader who fully understands your abstract is likely to be an expert and therefore should be able to skip at least the first section of the paper. A reader who does not understand something in the abstract should focus on the introduction, which gently introduces and points to all the necessary background knowledge to get started.

Abstract和Introduction都是读者阅读你论文的大门。你可以把Absctract看做一个进门测试，如果一个读者能完全看懂你的Abstract，那他就是一个专家了，可以跳过论文的第一部分(Introduction)；如果一个读者对你Abstract中某些内容不是很理解，那他需要好好看看Introduction，以便掌握基本的背景知识。

 

A (ficticious) bad example:

这里有一个案例（虚构的）：

Intrusion detection with neural networks and fuzzy logic

Abstract: With the continuous growth of the Internet, security intrusions become an ever bigger problem for the information society. Intrusion detection systems are intended to alert system administrators to suspicious events in log files, to help in rapid discovery and remediation of security incitents. In this work, we have used a novel type of neural network combined with a fuzzy logic classifier. Be believe that this approach can substantially improve the state of the art.

• 《基于神经网络和模糊逻辑的入侵检测》

• 摘要：随着因特网持续的进步，安全入侵逐渐成为信息社会的大问题。入侵检测系统的目的，是针对日志文件中的可疑事件，给系统管理员报警，以便帮助管理员快速发现及纠正这些安全干扰。在这个工作中，我们用了一种新的结合模糊逻辑分类器的神经网络。相信这个方法能够大大提高检测水平。

The same paper could have been abstracted for experts in a much more informative way:

其实这篇论文摘要可以写的更专业一些，信息量更大一些。

Abstract: In the learning phase, we fed our FuzzyIDS with the system-call section of the BLAFAS’05 competition log-file training corpus. We first normalized filenames using Hugh’s method, then converted function call parameters into 6-element feature vectors using a slight modification of the SniffIt 3.1 preprocessor. The resulting 3200 vectors were randomly split into four groups to train four instances of the 4-layer backpropagation network in the GNU R neural-network toolbox. Each trained network was then fed again with all 3200 vectors, and the resulting output used to train McCaigh’s FuzzyClass classifier. The recall rate achieved by FuzzyIDS on the test set is 34% better than the BLAFAS’05 winner, at a comparable CPU load.

摘要：在学习阶段，我们用BLAFAS’05竞赛日志文件训练语料库来训练我们的FuzzyIDS系统。我们首先通过Hugh's方法归一化文件名，然后利用改进的Snifflt3.1预处理器将6元特征向量转化为函调参数。（后面不翻译了，前面已经很晕了，I am the wider audience）……

The first example gives no clue about what was actually done in the presented work, while the second gives readers a very quick idea of whether they are interested in the work and if so what they need to learn from the introduction before they can fully understand it.

第一个例子没有给出当前论文做了什么的线索，第二个例子能让读者快速了解他们是否对这个工作感兴趣，以及他们在阅读全文前需要在Introduction中学习什么。

 

Write the abstract last. It is conceptually much closer to the conclusion than the introduction, therefore it is best written after the conclusion is finished.

最后写摘要：相比Introduction，摘要Abstract和结论Conclusion更接近一些，因此最好在写完结论之后再写摘要。

 

Abstracts should stand on their own. Many expert readers will not have time to read more than your abstract. Do not use numeric references to bibliography, sections, or even footnotes in the abstract, because users of abstract databases may not have instant access to the full paper. Also avoid complex mathematical notation (subscripts, fractions, etc.), because abstract databases are unlikely to render them correctly.

写摘要需要站在自己的立场上：很多专家读者只看摘要，没时间看别的部分。不要在摘要中用数字引用你问中的任何部分，因为很多论文数据库的摘要部分不提供全文跳转，同样避免复杂的数学概念，因为论文数据库一般不能很好的显示算数内容。

 

原文地址：https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2007/03/14/how-not-to-write-an-abstract/