Compendiousness

Over the last century, science and technology have made great progress all over the world. To keep up with the progress in their fields, it is impossible for scientists and engineers to read all the materials, and they have to rely on reading abstracts to understand the main content of the original quickly, accurately and completely. It's a time-and-effort saving device which has been widely used by scientists and engineers. Thus, the study on writing English Abstracts of Science and Technology (EAST) is necessary. But there have been very few systematic studies on this subject in China. The present thesis concentrates on the discussion of compendiousness which is one of outstanding features of an abstract. It focuses on the selection of contents from the original as well as the corresponding rhetorical techniques in achieving compendiousness in scientific and technical English article abstracting. Thus, the reader might know how to prepare an accurate, brief and clear abstract. Chapter One is an introduction, which surveys the works on the English article abstracting in scientific and technical fields both in foreign countries and in China. Then, the purpose and scope of the study in present paper are clarified. Chapter Two is literature review, which states the important stylistic theories of EAST. Then the development of abstracting is reviewed and informs the reader of the beginnings and application of abstracts in different historical periods. In Chapter Three, the classifications of the EAST are discussed, which include informative, indicative/descriptive, indicative -informative, critical and special purpose abstracts. In Chapter Four, a global understanding about the characteristics of EAST is provided in two items —the concept and its characteristics. In Chapter Five, practical processes to select and condense contents from the original documents are discussed. Chapter Six provides the readers with some necessary writing techniques in achieving compendiousness in abstracting. The last chapter concludes abstracting is an art. It integrates the authors'ability of reading, analyzing, synthesizing as well as good idiomatic English writing skills. For those who abstract other people's articles, a comprehensive reading and understanding about the original document is more critical for writing a good abstract.