What is a blurb and why should you always read it?
A blurb is the text that you will always see just before the passage begins. It's a little summary of the passage that you are about to read, essentially. In the title image above, there are two examples of a blurb; we can look at one right now:
"This passage is from Charlotte Bronte, The Professor, originally published in 1857."
In the blurb above, we can get some basic information about the passage we are about to read. We know the author is Charlotte Bronte. We know the title of the work is The Professor. And, we know it was published in 1857.
I always recommend reading every blurb. Why? Well, because of these three pieces of information above.
First, the blurb will always give you the author of the work. Odds are, you won't recognize the author, or, even if you recognize the author, you likely will not have read anything by that author. However, in the case of our example above, there is a chance you've heard of Charlotte Bronte, or at least the name Bronte. She's the author of the novel Jane Eyre, a 19th century, gothic, Victorian novel. Or, you may recognize the last name Bronte and be reminded of her sister, Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights, an iconic gothic romance. If you do, then you already have an idea of what to expect in the passage that follows: gothic, Victorian themes, possibly. So, if you know something about the author mentioned in the blurb, it might give you a hint about the theme, the topic, the tone, the language, the genre, etc. of the passage.
Next, we are given the title of the work: The Professor. The title will often give you the best hints about the passage that you can find in the blurb. First, the title often tells you what kind of passage this will be. If the title is something like The Lapis Lazuli Trade in the Ancient Near East, then the passage will probably be more informative in format. It's very clear what topic will be covered in the passage, and there is no clear opinion being presented to the reader. Now, if the title does contain an opinion, for instance, something like Why Dogs Are Not Only Man's Best Friend but Cat's Best Friend, as Well, then you would probably expect more of a persuasive text than an informative one. You might guess that this sort of passage would present an argument and use various techniques to prove that argument right. Finally, if you see a title that leaves you with more questions than answers, seems very abstract, symbolic, or seems to be a metaphor of some kind, like An Open Door to the World, then you are probably dealing with a more narrative passage. In this type of passage, you might expect to find a story, characters, and maybe some dialogue.
So, what kind of passage would the title, The Professor, imply? Well, it seems to be a little mysterious. We might have some questions after seeing that title: who is this professor? is this talking about a literal professor? what is so special about this professor? With so many questions, this might be the title of a narrative passage.
The title will also often tell you what the topic of the passage is. Sometimes, the title will spell out the topic clearly, but, sometimes, the title will hint at the topic. The Professor probably hints that the passage that follows will be about a professor, or the professor will be mentioned by one of the characters.
One thing to keep in mind; however, is that the title presented in the blurb is the title of the larger work, not the specific passage being presented to you. If you notice, all blurbs contain some language like adapted from or is from, meaning that the passage that follows is just an excerpt, one small part, of a larger story, essay, article or book. This means that the title may not always reflect the specific topic discussed in the passage, but should be related to that topic in some way, at least. For example, maybe The Lapis Lazuli Trade in the Ancient Near East is the name of the book the passage comes from, but this passage is just focused on describing the physical properties of lapis lazuli, not the trade of it or the ancient Near East, specifically.
The last piece of useful information that can be found in every blurb is the year of publication. In our example blurb from Charlotte Bronte, the year of publication is stated as 1857. What might that say about the passage that follows? 1857 is a long time ago, over 150 years in the past. So, you might expect more archaic language (there may be words or phrases used that are unfamiliar to you or that have a different meaning than their modern definitions), and you may see some odd sentence structures, as well. However, if you saw a publication year from, say, 1980 or 1990, you might expect more modern language and sentence structures.
For non-narrative passages, the year of pubication might tell you whether the information in the passage is out of date. For example, a passage about genetics from 1960 might contain some outdated information since so many discoveries in genetics have been uncovered since then. For these non-narrative passages, the year of publication can also tell you about the context of the topic being discussed in the passage. A passage about mass media written in 1900 would be very different from one about mass media written in 2010.
Most blurbs will be fairly short, just one or two sentences stating the author, title and year of publication of the work. However, sometimes, you will get some additional information in the blurb that maybe explain some detail about the author, the topic, or maybe presents a definition of some term related to the topic. For example, you may see something like this:
"This passage is adapted from Alan Ehrenhalt, The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City. ©2013 by Vintage. Ehrenhalt is an urbanologist — a scholar of cities and their development. Demographic inversion is a phenomenon that describes the rearrangement of living patterns throughout a metropolitan area."
In this blurb, we get the typical information: the author (Alan Ehrenhalt), the title (The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City), and the year of publication (2013). But, we also get some extra information, too. We get a definition of a term, demographic inversion. Any time you get a definition of a term or an explanation of a concept in the blurb, that is a critical term or concept for the passage. So, in the above example, demographic inversion is probably a term used throughout the passage and may be central to understanding the topic of the passage. In the blurb, we also get more information about the author: he is an urbanologist. Why tell us he is an urbanologist, in the blurb? It might be because knowing he is an urbanologist may be important to understand some of the things he mentions in the passage. Basically, whenever you see extra information presented to you in the blurb, it is there because that information is important to understand the passage, and it may not be presented in the passage itself, or it is presented in the passage but hard to understand.
So, to wrap all this up, why is it imporant to read the blurb? Because it gives you important information about the passage in a nice, condensed form. Always read the blurb!