View source for Foreword

{{Short description|Introductory section of a book}}
{{distinguish|text=the [[relative direction]] of "forward"}}
{{Other uses}}
{{More citations needed|date=August 2012}}
[[File:Hamilton Men I Have Painted 007.jpg|thumb|The foreword to ''Men I Have Painted'', by John McLure Hamilton; 1921]]
[[File:Der Haussekretär Hrsg Carl Otto Berlin ca 1900 F Titelseiten 3 Vorwort1.jpg|thumb|Foreword, to a 1900 book in German]]
A '''foreword''' is a (usually short) piece of writing, sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of [[literature]].  Typically written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between the writer of the foreword and the book's primary author or the story the book tells.  Later editions of a book sometimes have a new foreword prepended (appearing before an older foreword, if there was one), which might explain how this edition differs respects that edition differs from previous ones.

When written by the author, the foreword may cover the story of how the book came into being or how the idea for the book was developed, and may include thanks and acknowledgments to people who were helpful to the author during the time of writing.<ref>{{cite web | last = Pope| first = Geoff| title = "Foreword" Versus "Forward" | work = Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips| publisher = Macmillan Holdings, LLC| date = 18 November 2010| url = https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/foreword-versus-forward| access-date = 20 November 2020}}</ref> Unlike a [[preface]], a foreword is always signed.

Information essential to the main text is generally placed in a set of explanatory notes, or perhaps in an [[introduction (essay)|introduction]], rather than in the foreword or like preface.

The pages containing the foreword and preface (and other [[Book design|front matter]]) are typically not numbered as part of the main work, which usually uses [[Arabic numerals]]. If the front matter is paginated, it uses lowercase [[Roman numerals]].  If there is both a foreword and a preface, the foreword appears first; both appear before the introduction, which may be paginated either with the front matter or the main text.

The word ''foreword'' was first used around the mid-17th century, originally as a term in [[philology]].{{Dubious|date=March 2023|reason=Earliest citation in OED is 1842; can't find anything earlier in Google Books}} It was possibly a [[calque]] of [[German (language)|German]] ''Vorwort'', itself a calque of Latin ''praefatio''.

==See also==
* [[Afterword]]
* [[Epigraph (literature)|Epigraph]]
* [[Introduction (writing)|Introduction]]
* [[Preface]]
* [[Prologue]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Forewords}}
{{Wiktionary}}
* [http://www.patmcnees.com/the_difference_between_a_preface__foreword__and_introduction_52536.htm The difference between a preface, foreword, and introduction] – PatMcNees.com

{{Book structure}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Book design]]
[[Category:Book terminology]]
[[Category:Literary theory]]