Writing a thesis abstract

The five moves, and how many words each gets

Many scholars write the abstract like a small introduction, with a slow start. There is no space for that here. Give each move two or three sentences and go to the next one.

The table gives one way to split a 400-word abstract. An engineering abstract may need more words for the method. For social science it is many times the findings that need more space. Still, in almost every field the findings should get the most words. One of the common mistake we see in thesis abstracts is exactly the reverse. Three-quarters of the abstract goes on background and method, and the results come in two lines at the end.

An example abstract, move by move

We wrote this abstract for an imaginary engineering thesis. All the numbers in it are invented. Here we split it into numbered lines, one line for one move, so you can see where each move starts. Inside the thesis you will write it as one paragraph only.

[1] Paddy in Tamil Nadu suffers heavy losses from leaf diseases. Early detection still depends on extension staff checking the crop by eye, and each of them covers thousands of hectares. Deep learning models are able to classify leaf images, but most published models were trained on clean laboratory photographs and perform poorly on images from the field.

[2] This thesis builds and tests a lightweight model that detects four common paddy leaf diseases from smartphone images taken in field conditions.

[3] Over two seasons, 6,200 images were collected from 38 farms in Thanjavur and Tiruvarur districts and labelled together with plant pathologists. Three architectures were compared. The selected model was then compressed so that it runs on a mid-range phone with no internet connection.

[4] On field images the final model achieved 91.4% accuracy, against 78.2% for the strongest published model when we ran it on the same set of images. On the test phone the model needed under one second per image. Accuracy came down to 83% for photos taken in early morning hours, and dew on the leaves was the main reason.

[5] For this task, training on field images was more important than the size of the model. The model and the labelled dataset can be used by extension staff and by farmer apps in the Cauvery delta.

This comes to about 200 words. In a real thesis you would add some more on the method and on the second objective. What we want you to see is the shape. Move 4 has the figures, and it also reports one weakness, the drop in accuracy in the early morning. Keep one limit like this in your abstract also. From our experience, examiners are happier when the scholar tells the weak point openly on their own.

What to leave out

If your abstract is over the limit, cut things in this order.

1. History and general background. Keep one or two sentences of context.
2. Citations. In most universities the abstract is written without any references, so take them out.
3. Chapter-by-chapter description. We still see “Chapter 1 introduces… Chapter 2 reviews…” type of lines in many drafts. These lines eat your word limit, and the reader still does not know what you found. A few departments do want this description. If your department has not asked for it, remove it.
4. Every test you ran. Name the main analysis only. The full list goes in the methodology chapter.
5. Abbreviations used once. Suppose a short form is used only one time in the abstract. Then better to write the full term there itself.

Cut anything else you want, but the main finding with its key number has to remain. Some abstracts finish with “the results are discussed and suggestions are given”. Such a line tells the reader nothing. Most people will read only the abstract of your thesis, on Shodhganga or in a library catalogue.

Abstract rules at some South Indian universities

Most universities give the abstract length in their thesis format or in the regulations. In October 2026 we went through the official documents and checked the rules given below. These rules get revised from time to time. So before you finalise, once again open the regulations that apply for your batch and check.

Anna University (CFR)

As per the R2025 regulations, the abstract inside the thesis is an essay-style narration of not more than 4 pages. The scholar also submits two separate abstracts of about 400 words each, an English one and a Tamil one (17.2, 17.4).

University of Madras

A Tamil abstract of up to 10 pages comes before the contents page. The Tamil Virtual Academy, Chennai vets this abstract, and its certificate has to go with it (13.4, 13.7).

CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru

As per the thesis format guidelines (v1.3, July 2025), the abstract should be 350 to 500 words.

Everyone, under UGC 2018

The UGC plagiarism regulations say the abstract must be original. The abstract is one of the parts where copied text is treated most strictly. So please don’t paste lines from your synopsis or your papers without rewriting them.

Scholars from outside Tamil Nadu who register at Anna University or the University of Madras many times find out about the Tamil abstract only late in the process. If you are in that situation, plan the translation early. For Madras, keep time for the vetting also, well before you submit.

How the words are usually counted

Universities give a word limit, but mostly they don’t say how to count it. Usually only the body of the abstract is counted. The heading, the title and the keywords line are left out. Most offices and guides use Word’s counter (Review → Word Count), so you also use the same.

Some universities give the limit in pages, like Anna University with its four pages. Then font and spacing decide the count, so use the thesis format settings for the abstract page also. Don’t reduce the font size to fit in more matter. When the page looks crowded, the examiner can make out what you did at first look itself.

Some universities ask for keywords below the abstract. Mostly four to six terms are enough. Think what a person would type in Shodhganga or Google to find a thesis like yours, and use those words. Words that are already in your title need not come again in the keywords.

Abstract, synopsis and summary are not the same

Many scholars confuse these three. Universities themselves use the words loosely.

First, the synopsis. You prepare it as a document of its own, usually 5 to 20 pages, and you submit it before the thesis for approval. The University of Madras, for example, limits the synopsis to 5,000 words. Compared to this the abstract is very short. You put it in the thesis, right after the preliminary pages. A summary, or “summary of findings”, is many times part of the last chapter.

Taking ideas from the synopsis for your abstract is fine. Please don’t carry whole paragraphs across, because each document has its own length and its own purpose. One more problem is there. Text you copy from the synopsis can come up as matching text when the library runs the similarity check, depending on how the library has set up the software. It is better to write the abstract new, from your final results.

Last checks before you print

Read your abstract aloud once. If you run out of breath in a sentence, break it into two. After that, check four things. Do all the numbers match with the results chapter? Is the title on the abstract page exactly the same as the title on the cover? Is the abstract within the word or page limit? Are the tenses correct? What you did and what you got should be in past tense. For the meaning of those results, present tense is okay.

If you want some quick comments on your draft, put it in our abstract feedback tool once. For a closer edit, our thesis editing and proofreading work looks at the abstract along with the rest of the thesis. If the abstract is hard because your findings are not clear to you yet, first go back to the conclusion chapter and sort it out. With a clear conclusion the abstract becomes much easier.