What can you tell about the time period of the selection based on the illustrations when previewing a text?

What is it? Previewing a text means that you get an idea of what it is about without reading the main body of the text.

When to use it: to help you decide whether a book or journal is useful for your purpose; to get a general sense of the article structure, to help you locate relevant information; to help you to identify the sections of the text you may need to read and the sections you can omit.

To preview, start by reading:

the title and author details

the abstract (if there is one)

then read only the parts that ‘jump out’; that is: main headings and subheadings, chapter summaries, any highlighted text etc.

examine any illustrations, graphs, tables or diagrams and their captions, as these usually summarise the content of large slabs of text

the first sentence in each paragraph

Explanation: if this is wrong i’m sorry

answer: wait what

explanation: