43. Abstracting & Abridging
The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines an abstract as “mak[ing] a written summary or statement of (an article or book): staff who index and abstract material for an online database … a summary or statement of the contents of a book, article, or formal speech: an abstract of her speech.”
To abridge is similar: “shorten (a book, film, speech, or other text) without losing the sense.” Abridgement is “a shortened version of a larger work.”
Abridging is usually used for larger works, especially literary; abstracting is more often used for scientific, technical, or legal articles. The process is usually the same, however, and clients will often use the two words synonymously. The essential difference is that an appended summary of a report, or book, will be an abstract, while a shortening of the whole book from say 50,000 to 20,000 words is an abridgement.
Technical writers may occasionally be asked to do this, but it’s not a usual task for the general practitioner. This is very much a specialised job, given to those with a particular skill for extracting the nub of the matter, and reducing a whole lot of words to a concise and meaningful few. If you have a penchant for this type of work you are advised to consult a number of technical treatises on the subject, usually found in manuals of librarianship or database studies.
Next: 44. Indexing.
