This document provides guidelines for writing an abstract for research papers and theses. It discusses the purpose of an abstract to report the main aims and outcomes of the research. The abstract should highlight the key elements in no more than one paragraph using 7 important elements - a theme sentence, aim/objective, importance, methodology, major findings, conclusion, and implications. It also provides examples of abstracts for empirical studies, literature reviews, and theoretical/methodological papers and emphasizes that an abstract should be accurate, non-evaluative, coherent, readable, and concise.