A. A literary work's passage; an extract B. A concentrated preparation of a food, flavoring, or other substance's essential elements; a concentrate: maple extract. C. A portion of a book or other written work; a chapter. D. A section of an essay, review, or the like that presents an author's views on a particular subject.
According to Merriam-Webster, an extract is "a brief summary of the ideas in a book or article." English literature is full of examples of extracts. Here are three:
The first extract comes from Thomas Gray's 1771 poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn": "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their crouded streets and public ways, The sober joys of homely life, Are all which he whose heart is warm can give, Are all which thou, my love, should'st know." This line has been interpreted as saying that the urn represents Athens and that Gray is asking his love to leave Athens and join him in rural England.
The second extract comes from Alexander Pope's 1688 poem "Windsor Forest".
An extract is a paragraph or phrase extracted or chosen from a book, documentary, film, or the like. The term is most often applied to extracts used in advertising, but it can also be found in scholarly works and other kinds of writing.
Extracts are usually short passages that have been selected for their rhetorical effect, for example, to make a point about the book as a whole or something specific to the document itself. They are often but not always included in contemporary editions of books; if they are not, they must be obtained from another source. An extract may be quoted at length if it is considered important enough to do so explicitly.
The word "extract" comes from the Latin extergere, meaning "to set forth," which in turn comes from the verb cohere, meaning "to join together." Thus, an extract is a section of text that has been taken out of its context to show how well it fits with what else is in the work.
In journalism and advertising, extracts often take the form of short quotations. In academic writing, however, an extract will typically be a self-contained unit that demonstrates how well the author has understood the book they are analyzing.
An extract is a tiny portion of a book or piece of work that is printed or published separately. This might be an excerpt from a longer work, such as a chapter or section, or it could be a shorter piece written by itself. An extract may be printed individually as a pamphlet or magazine article, or it may be included in a larger publication.
Extracts are often used by publishers as promotion for their books. If you read an interesting review of a book in an influential newspaper or magazine, there's a good chance that publisher will send you a free copy of the book through the mail. Sometimes they will even send you several copies so that you can give them as gifts to your friends.
In literature, an extract is any short poem or prose composition found in a major literary work. The term is generally applied to pieces that are either completely independent of their context or have little relation to each other beyond being part of the same work. For example, "Methuselah's Clock" and "The Extractions From Memoirs Of A Modern Man" would both be extracts.
Extracts are often considered by poets to be important works in themselves with their own set of rules and standards.
(Entry 1 of 2): an extract is a passage chosen, performed, or reproduced from a book or musical piece. This may be done as a literary device for effect. For example, a writer might select a sentence or paragraph and give it special attention. This can help to highlight certain words or phrases and make them stand out from the rest of the text.
Excerpts are often used by authors when they want to let the reader know about something interesting that happens later in the story/article. For example, if I were writing about Napoleon Bonaparte, I might write an article titled "How Napoleon's Exile on St. Helena Affected His Political Career" and use this excerpt to introduce the topic.
An excerpt can also be used at the beginning of an article/book to get readers interested in what will follow. For example, if I were writing about Napoleon again, this time focusing on his life after he was exiled to Saint Helena, I could include this excerpt from another article/book about him to get people reading my article/book interested in what happened to this famous man after his downfall.
In literature, excerpts are often included in quotes to show how someone else views something.
The distinction between extract and excerpt as nouns is that an extract is anything that is extracted or drawn out, whereas an excerpt is a clip, sample, section, or extract from a larger work such as a news item, a film, a literary piece, or other media. An excerpt can be as short as one sentence but can also be a longer portion of text.
As verbs, the distinction is that an extract focuses on the first part of a work, while an excerpt focuses on a small but relevant portion of it. For example, an editor may extract an important point from a long article and include it in an email message to others. Or someone reading a book might select certain passages to excerpt and discuss them with friends.
An extract can be as brief as one sentence or as long as several pages. By contrast, an excerpt can be as little as a few words or as long as several paragraphs. Often, though, the term is used to describe a paragraph-or-less fragment taken from a longer work.
Extracts are most often found in magazines and newspapers, although they can appear in books, journals, and online sources too. Excerpts can be found in almost any type of media, but they are more common in books, magazines, and newspapers than they are in video games, movies, or music albums for example.
Copyright © 2020 - 2023 Authors Cast Inc.
