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Aforeword is a (usually short) piece of writing, sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece ofliterature. 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.[1] Unlike apreface, a foreword is always signed.
Information essential to the main text is generally placed in a set of explanatory notes, or perhaps in anintroduction, rather than in the foreword or like preface.
The pages containing the foreword and preface (and otherfront matter) are typically not numbered as part of the main work, which usually usesArabic numerals. If the front matter is paginated, it uses lowercaseRoman 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 wordforeword was first used around the mid-17th century, originally as a term inphilology.[dubious –discuss] It was possibly acalque ofGermanVorwort, itself a calque of Latinpraefatio.
