The instructions for submitting a paper to your professional organization require that you write a 200-word abstract. Your team’s template for technical reports requires an executive summary. You would like to write an introduction for a paper or report. But what is the difference between an abstract, an executive summary, and an introduction? And how do you write each? In the previous blog, we reviewed a 5-Question Method for Writing Abstracts.  Now let’s explore the executive summary.

A well-written executive summary (or simply summary) is a succinct, cohesive overview of a business, technical, or scientific investigation, situation, task, or proposal. A summary can serve as the basis for an oral briefing on the findings, situation, or proposed work and as the basis for an abstract.  A summary is written so that interested readers, regardless of technical knowledge, can understand the contents of the paper/report and the relevance of the findings and recommendations. Read more ›