Alexyskoutnev Abstract Writing (three master recipes)
Follow abstract-guide.md in this folder, it is the complete plain-English method.
This file is the operating summary.
Process
- Six answers first. Before any prose, write six rough bullets: what did you build / how does it work (ONE mechanism only) / where tested / numbers (as pairs) / the control-ablation / why it matters. One or two sentences each is the whole abstract.
- Pick a recipe from the guide: A (short + confident: one crisp mechanism, no numbers, comparative claims against baseline classes), B (numbers as drama: tension opener, paired before/after figures, kill the reviewer's doubt in one clause), C (anchor then extend: start from a familiar idea, enumerate concretely, end on an idea not a metric). Default for results-heavy systems papers: B's structure with A's compression. If the advisor favors ideas over metrics, close with C's idea sentence.
- Draft, then run the mechanical audit (never skip):
- Sentence 1 states the contribution with a strong verb (give, present, introduce).
- Count words per sentence: none above ~28, average ~20.
- Zero occurrences of "can", "cannot", "could".
- Every "This/These" is followed by a noun ("This gate shows...", never "This shows...").
- Every number has a partner (from X to Y; ours vs. theirs; with vs. without).
- Each number is attached to the correct claim, never borrow a similar-looking statistic from a different measurement.
- Last sentence is an idea, not a number. 140-190 words. No contractions.
- Read it aloud; fix every stumble. Compare against the closest rival paper's abstract and make the differentiation audible in one clause.
Reference file
abstract-guide.md: the full plain-English guide (recipes, templates, sentence surgery, the assembled fill-in-the-blank template, and twelve further rules from the classic writing guides and canonical ML abstracts).