Abstracting as a way to extract and present the main information of the text

The paper describes the process of abstracting as one of the most difficult types of verbal and cogitative activity. Particular attention is paid to the research of the main abstracting methods and the mechanisms of content compression and its representation in a new text (an abstract). The paper presents the denotative analysis approach aimed to extract from the source text its denotative structure which presents its main content. The paper also touches upon the problem of automated abstracting as one of the emerging computer text processing approaches in the age of highly-informed society. The authors suggest the presented method of abstracting, based on the denotative analysis, can be used for formalization of abstracting.