Abstract writing

Did I say before that -unlike you may expect- a scientist in fact spends a major part of his/her job writing? Well, I might have forgotten to mention that we also spend another big chunk of time counting words and then cutting them. For manuscripts, for grant proposals but mostly for abstracts of all kinds. Ugh, it really is not my favorite part of the job! I can write a decent abstract in about an hour, but I typically spend another hour cutting those last 26 words...