The following prints all lines in the file specified. You can also replace $0 with nothing.
<sxh bash>
awk '{ print $0 }'
</sxh>
The following will only print the first column in the file. The -F is the field seperator and is specified with: -F":"
<sxh bash>
awk -F":" '{ print $1 }' /etc/passwd
</sxh>
\\
You can also select multiple columns and separate them with a space for a better format
<sxh bash>
awk -F":" '{ print $1 " " $2 }' /etc/passwd
</sxh>
Grab every instance where column is greater than 4
<sxh bash>
sar -q | awk '$4 >= 4'
</sxh>
Awk for multiple words
<sxh bash>
awk '/Luke|Joe/' test
</sxh>
Awk for multiple words case insensitive: 
<sxh bash>
awk '/Luke|Joe/i' test
</sxh>
awk inversely 
<sxh bash>
awk '!/Luke/' test
</sxh>
\\
\\
<sxh bash>
| awk '$5 ~ /[0-9]w/'
</sxh>
<sxh bash>
| awk '$5 ~ /[0-9]w/ && $6 ~ /REG/'
</sxh>