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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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).