Presents guidelines for the preparation and presentation of abstracts of documents. Applies to abstracts prepared by the authors of primary documents, and to their publication, because such abstracts can be both helpful to the readers of these documents and reproducible with little or no change in secondary publications and services. The basic guidelines are also suitable for the preparation of abstracts by persons other than the authors. Cancels and replaces ISO Recommendation R 214-1961, of which it constitutes a technical revision.