How to write a lay summary of your research

A lay summary (also called a plain-language summary or lay abstract) is a short account of your work for readers with no training in your field. Journals, funders and grant panels increasingly ask for one. Here is a method that keeps it honest, with a before-and-after example.

What the reader needs, in order

1. What you studied and why, in one or two sentences.
2. What you did, in plain steps: who or what, how many, where, when.
3. What you found, with your key numbers.
4. What it means, and what it does not show, with the same hedges your paper uses.

Many funders add a fifth item: who could benefit. Only write it if your results support it. If you are unsure, leave a visible blank for yourself and decide later; an unsupported benefit claim is the quickest way to lose a sceptical panel.

Seven rules

1. Check the target first: the word limit, person (we or the team), tense, and any required headings. Ask the portal how it counts words.
2. Aim for short sentences, around 15 to 18 words on average, and one idea each. Plain-language guidance from digital.gov and the Cochrane plain-language standards both ask for text written for the actual audience in everyday words.
3. Replace technical terms, or explain them once in a few words. Spell out an acronym, or avoid it.
4. Keep every number exactly as in your paper. Do not round up, add "millions of people", or compute a new percentage in the summary.
5. Keep your hedges. "Associated with", "suggests" and "may" are not "causes", "shows" or "will".
6. Keep the limitation. One city, one season, no control group: say it in one short sentence.
7. Read it aloud to someone outside your field and ask them to explain it back to you.

Before and after

Before (abstract wording, from our fictional sample study): "Community composition differed between treatments, with several open-habitat specialists recorded only on unmown verges."

After: "The mix of species differed too. Several species that prefer open ground appeared only on unmown verges."

The after version splits one 14-word sentence into two short ones, swaps three technical terms for everyday phrases, and loses nothing the paper claims. You can paste your own version into the free lay summary checker to see its word count and reading grade.

Where the numbers come from

The reading grade in our checker uses the Flesch-Kincaid formula with a rough syllable count, so it is a guide. Public-reading-level advice usually quotes grade 7 to 8; the checker treats up to grade 9 as acceptable for a general adult reader, because accurate science words cannot always be avoided. For clinical reviews, Cochrane has published plain-language reporting standards (PLEACS) that a secondary checklist summarises as a 400 to 700 word summary; always follow your own journal's or funder's instructions first. A $7 AI-written draft of your own abstract is available if you want a starting point.