title: [Writing English abstracts of high quality in standard English acceptable for publication].
abstract: Writing an abstract presents a unique challenge to any author. It requires brevity of the written word, conciseness of thought and accuracy of presentation. A structured abstract is the most important starting point for a well written dental article. Shanghai Journal of Stomatology, a Chinese national journal of oral medicine, oral and maxillofacial surgery, prosthodontics, orthodontics, oral pathology, endodontics, oral radiology, etc, has been included and indexed in Chemical Abstracts, Index Medicus and MEDLINE. This peer reviewed refereed journal demands Chinese and English abstracts of high quality for all manuscripts. Each manuscript should provide qualified abstracts for citation and indexing, which are written in standard English using the correct terms, sentences and grammar. Structured abstracts about 500 characters are required for clinical articles, clinical reports, basic scientific articles; while indicative abstracts (summary) are mandatory to short communications and case reports as well as review articles. Generally, the abstracts should be written in the past tense and passive voice (in the third person), with exception of conclusion(s), which can be in the primary tense and active voice. The structured abstracts are consisted of PURPOSE (S), METHODS, CONCLUSION (S), and CONCLUSION (S), which should offer the important information on the number of the subjects, methods of grouping and statistics, database attained, P values, etc. The conclusion (s) must be detailed rather than conceptive. This editorial introduces the ins and outs of writing an English abstracts acceptable for publication.
authors.forename: Jia-wei
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Zhi-yuan
authors.initials: ZY
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D007802:Language; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D014956:Writing