FABS (Formulated Abstracting): An Experiment in Regularized Content Description.

This preliminary report of research conducted at the Linguistics Documentation Centre of the University of Ottawa describes a bilingual experiment into the elaboration of well structured formulary routines for making the writing of abstracts easier, and at the same time standardizing and generally augmenting the information given in them. The methodology of formulary construction and expansion is detailed, and examples of formulated abstracts are included. A reduction in the cost and an increase in the speed of abstracting are expected to result from further research. (Author/PM)