I try to include elements of all types of writing here, so while most of you might not be writing abstracts anytime soon, there might be one tiny voice in the wilderness who is working on a manuscript they're submitting not to the New Yorker but JAMA. (Actually, if they're submitted to JAMA, I hope they know what they're talking about by now. Anyway, here is a basic guide to writing an abstract, that little short bitty thing that starts off a scientific manuscript. You can find a lot more on it of course at the actual JAMA (That's Journal of the American Medical Association) website.