Before you dive into JSTOR read Noah Gray's "Abstract Science," an introduction to abstracts, at The Huffington Post online. Gray focuses on science abstracts, but you will find many of these same elements in abstracts written for scholarly humanities articles.
Unfortunately, JSTOR's abstracts are considerably truncated or completely absent. But a title gives you very little to go on. So try searching article titles in Google scholar or in Google, limiting your search with site:.edu.
Unfortunately, JSTOR's abstracts are considerably truncated or completely absent. But a title gives you very little to go on. So try searching article titles in Google scholar or in Google, limiting your search with site:.edu.