The abstract

An abstract is routinely capped by its own, independent word limit — separate from the manuscript body’s own. Getting a count for it separately needs one small, deliberate step, because of how most templates actually take an abstract: as a template.with(abstract: ...) parameter, evaluated and handed to the template before instrument()‘s own template: ever runs — never part of the manuscript body colophon’s word count walks at all. There’s no generic way to detect “this content is the abstract” after the fact, so colophon asks for one explicit marker instead:

abstract(body): renders body completely unchanged — visually identical to writing abstract: my-text directly — but drops an invisible marker report() can find later, so this content gets its own word count.
abstract-word-count(start, end, count-captions: false): what render-report(...) calls internally to produce the “Abstract word count” row; exposed on its own for a project that wants the number outside the usual report layout. none if abstract(...) was never used anywhere in the manuscript — not an error, most manuscripts in colophon’s own tests have none.

A minimal example — the abstract written directly in the manuscript, under its own heading, the simplest case:

#import "../../lib.typ": *
#import "../../../typst-contexture/lib.typ" as contexture

#let my-template(body) = {
  set page(width: 16.6cm, height: auto, margin: 12pt)
  set text(size: 10.5pt)
  body
}

#show: contexture.bundle.with(
  template: instrument(template: my-template),
  documents: (report(),),
)

= Abstract

#abstract[
  This abstract has exactly seven words here.
]

= Introduction

This is the real body of the manuscript, with six words counted here.

The abstract never gets its own row in "Word count by section"

Worth spelling out, since it’s easy to expect otherwise: even written as an ordinary = Abstract heading followed by prose, the text wrapped in abstract(...) doesn’t show up as an “Abstract” row in the per-section table above — only the separate “Abstract word count” statistic reports it. That’s deliberate, not an oversight: abstract(...) renders its visible content wrapped in context, specifically so the general per-section walk — which would otherwise double-count it, once here and once in the dedicated abstract count — simply never sees it. The heading still exists in the real manuscript, exactly as written; it just contributes nothing of its own to the body breakdown.

As a template parameter

The far more common case in practice — wrap it exactly the same way, right where the template asks for it:

#let my-template = some-journal-template.with(
  abstract: abstract(lorem(150)),   // wrap wherever you already write it
  ...
)

Nothing else changes: report() finds it the same way either way, since the marker itself, not where it happens to sit, is what abstract-word-count looks for.

← Word counts

Figure and table inventory →