Group separation of the aqueous extract of fine particles bearing water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) provides unique insights into the sources of organic carbon (OC). XAD-8 resin coupled with a Total Organic Carbon analyzer allows for direct quantification. We term the fraction of WSOC not retained by a XAD-8 resin column at pH 2 as hydrophilic WSOC (WSOCxp); this includes saccharides, amines, and carbonyls and aliphatic monocarboxylic/dicarboxylic/oxocarboxylic acids with less than 4 or 5 carbons. The fraction of WSOC retained by XAD-8, termed the hydrophobic fraction (WSOCxr), include aromatic acids, phenols, organic nitrates, cyclic acids, and carbonyls and monocarboxylic/dicarboxylic acids with greater than 3 or 4 carbons. However, only aromatic compounds (or aromatic-like compounds with similar properties) can subsequently be extracted from XAD-8 with high efficiency. By coupling a Particle-into-Liquid Sampler with this technique, online measurements of WSOC, WSOCxp, and WSOCxr are possible. Urban measurements from St. Louis and Atlanta, on a carbon mass basis, show an increase in the mean WSOC fraction from winter (51%) to summer (61%), due to increases in the WSOCxp/OC from 0.25 to 0.35. During a summer Atlanta PM event, WSOC to OC was 0.75, driven largely by increases in the WSOCxp. The results are consistent with the view that in the summer, there are increased amounts of oxygenated polar compounds, possibly from secondary organic aerosol production, and that these compounds account for an even larger fraction of OC during stagnation events. A companion paper describes a method to further group speciate these XAD-8 isolated fractions.