Please add some information as to what you mean by it does not look like a real abstract. Preferably as a fully compilable MWE that illustrates the problem including the \documentclass and the appropriate packages. This will also serve as a test case and ensure that the solution actually works for you.
Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 23:09A tip: If you indent lines by 4 spaces, then they're marked as a code sample. You can also highlight the code and click the "code" button ( <> ). I took the liberty to format you post a little. See this link for more details on available formatting.
Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 23:10 You should say \chapter in the abstract file at the start and then \include Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 23:14What does the contents of abstract.tex look like? And what do you want the output to look like since a "real abstract" may be subjective?
Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 23:43A few weeks ago I tried to add a dedication and an abstract to my book-document and this is what I found on the net and adapted:
\thispagestyle \null\vspace> \begin This is the Dedication. \end \vspace>\null \newenvironment% \null\vfill\begin% \bfseries\abstractname\end>% \begin This is the abstract. \end
\newenvironment% \null\vfill\begin% \bfseries Acknowledgements\end>% \begin These are the acknowledgements. \end
\frontmatter \include \include \include \include \include \tableofcontents . and so on . \begin \frontmatter \tableofcontents \chapter \chapter \cleardoublepage \thispagestyle \vspace*> \begin \itshape Dedicated to my cat\\ and my dog \end \vspace> \cleardoublepage \mainmatter . If you load the emptypage package, pages with no text added by explicit or implicit \cleardoublepage commands will be empty.
Note that there is no need to use \chapter* in the \frontmatter : it's instead better to use \chapter , because the entries will automatically go in the table of contents.
I'd not put the dedication in the table of contents, but feel free to do it with \addcontentsline .
If you want to use different files and \include , do it: it doesn't make any difference (but remember that \include always issues a \clearpage command).
777k 70 70 gold badges 1.6k 1.6k silver badges 2.5k 2.5k bronze badges answered Apr 11, 2012 at 15:23 1.2m 141 141 gold badges 2.7k 2.7k silver badges 4.3k 4.3k bronze badgesI had a similar problem when typing up my thesis. I read a few possible work-arounds and ended up with this one. First of all I'm used to not having abstract and acknowledgments in toc, but my solution can be tweaked to accommodate this wish with \addcontentsline .
To use this solution simply copy the two .sty-files below into an empty text-file and save them as bookabstract.sty and acknowledgments.sty in the same folder as your .tex-file and load them with \usepackage and \usepackage . Then it's straight forward with \begin , \end , \begin and \end .
Here's what I did: First I made a two new .sty-files. One called bookabstract.sty and one called acknowledgments.sty (I should stress that these are not of my own making. I'm much obliged to whoever it was that posted this abstract-definition on another forum.) The only differences between them is that everywhere bookabstracts.sty contains the word "abstract" acknowledgments.sty contains the word "acknowledgments", and acknowledgments.sty contains a line defining \acknowledgmentsname . My thesis has two abstracts, one in English and one in Norwegian, so instead of defining \abstractname in the bookabstract.sty , I simply loaded babel with \usepackage[british,norsk] and used \selectlanguage . \abstractname is defined in babel, so this way my English abstract is called "Abstract" and my Norwegian abstract is called "Sammendrag" (which, as you may have guessed, is Norwegian for abstract). If you do not want to use babel, then you can simply define the \abstractname in the .sty-file.
Here is my bookabstract.sty :
%% Remember to load babel before loading this package or define the command \abstractname! \makeatletter \if@titlepage \newenvironment% \bfseries \abstractname \@endparpenalty\@M \end>% <\par\vfil\null\endtitlepage>\else \newenvironment% \else \small \begin% \vspace>% \end% \quotation \fi> <\if@twocolumn\else\endquotation\fi>\fi \makeatother And this is my acknowledgments.sty :
\newcommand\acknowledgmentsname %%copy this to the other package if you don't want to use babel (replace Acknowledgments with Abstract). \makeatletter \if@titlepage \newenvironment% \bfseries \acknowledgmentsname \@endparpenalty\@M \end>% <\par\vfil\null\endtitlepage>\else \newenvironment% \else \small \begin% \vspace>% \end% \quotation \fi> <\if@twocolumn\else\endquotation\fi>\fi \makeatother