Q. What is an abstract?

Please Note: These are only common assumptions and suggestions about writing an abstract. The requirements of such assignments often vary, so please follow your instructor's guidelines. 

An abstract is a summary of a longer work. Typically, while researching in databases, you will see abstracts with journal articles to help you decide if the articles are useful without having to read the whole article first.

Here's an example of an article in a ProQuest database, where the abstract is at the start of the article. This peer reviewed article was found using the Discovery catalog. Here is the result for it.

The most common situation in which you might write an abstract at TCC is for an essay in APA style, which generally does not ask for more than 250 words. However, your professor's guidelines should always be followed. Being a summary, the abstract will need to capture your essay's thesis and as many of its main points as possible.