Wednesday, January 17, 2007

An Abstract Question

My blog-soulmate The Belle has a post up on abstracts, as does Mike Madison (these are from a while back). I wrote an abstract (sort of) for an article today. I got an email from the Political Science departmental assistant about a journal with an upcoming deadline for article submissions. By "upcoming" I mean "less than a week's notice." So I quickly recomposed one of my seminar papers, added an epilogue, and sent it in.

Back to the pseudo-abstract I wrote for the submission email. The abstract (and, to be honest, the epilogue) was not just a summary (though it did that) but also a veiled (how thinly, I don't know) argument for why it should be accepted for publication. Why it's important, why the topic is underappreciated, etc.. Is this a good thing to do in the abstract?

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