Maybe, but I never did this before I tripled my reading volume while attending grad school. I thought skimming entailed some degree of horizontal scanning and actively reading clusters of words. In contrast, I don't even read clusters of 2 words when I do this and I don't aim to comprehend the skipped passages. I just automatically detect that they're irrelevant with basically zero reading.
Experiences may vary, but I've always thought of skimming as something that could be done to various degrees. Some examples:
1. going through pages looking for interesting textual structure, for example dialog, numbers, capitalized words, etc.
2. scanning vertically or in a zig-zag fashion, using peripheral vision to look for interesting words
3. reading the first few words of a paragraph before deciding if it's interesting or not.
I normally use 2, then try 3 on a paragraph that passes 2's test. Only when a paragraph passes test 2 and 3, do I decide to read it with my (temporary) full attention. 1's more for when I'm searching for something in particular or when what I'm reading follows a specific format and I'm interested in a particular section with distinctive structure.
Wow. That is next-level stuff. This makes me think of how varied the human experience is, even for the most routine activities. I've heard the word "skimming" hundreds or maybe thousands of times before, but clearly it is an inaccurate abstraction of the range of things someone can mean when they say "skimming."
Here is a dictionary definition: "The action of reading something quickly so as to note only the important points." If you showed me that definition before I started skimming effectively, I would have never extrapolated the behavior you described from that word. I didn't even know people did that.
-----------Idea ----------
I could see value in an open source "Verbose Dictionary" where people from all ages and walks of life would be able to add their own definition of a word. There would be two general rules when someone makes an entry:
1. They would need to write their definition in a verbose manner. I'm thinking at least three sentences, usually more, but also not as long as a Wikipedia entry.
2. They would need to be as open and honest as possible, so that there's minimal translation loss between what they're communicating and what we take away from it. Importantly, the word needs to be described with both intellectual and emotional cues. The author would also be able to let the reader know basic facts about themselves, and there would be some mitigations against trolling or fakers.
Over time, we would converge on a more universal language to maximize our mutual understanding of what each of us truly feel and think about words, concepts, current events, people, etc.... There would also be optional tags and slider scales (i.e. 1-10) that can attach to each definition so that you can correctly communicate the breadth, depth, and magnitude of your thoughts and feelings on the word. Critically, the goal would not be to achieve groupthink and converge on the same definition. That would be contrary to the premise of the Verbose Dictionary.
Not only would I find such a dictionary highly captivating, but I also think that it can serve as a useful tool for conceptual mapping or things like artificial neural networks. What are your thoughts? Would you use the Verbose Dictionary?
It would have a different aim than Wikipedia. Wikipedia, is, above all, a source of knowledge. That's where I go when I want to chain-read about the German Revolution of 1918. It doesn’t have the emotional and sociological theme I’m describing.
VD on the other hand would be a real-time, K-clustered map of the human experience. If you go to the entry for Love, you’d see people from all over the world sharing what loves mean to them, anecdotes and all. Crowdsourced feedback would surface the best entries to the top. Political topics would solicit good-faithed micro-blogs with the specific aim of humanizing each other and learning why we believe in what we do. You'd be able to go back in time to see where people's minds and hearts were at on a certain day. Algorithms and strict moderation would ensure that diverse viewpoints are shared and treated in good faith. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think if there’s a dictionary for swearwords, there’s certainly room for a dictionary of the human experience.
Check out the below study published in Nature in 2019. It makes the claim that cultural values of openness are what give rise to democracy, rather than the other way around. We need more of that openness right now. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0769-1
The purpose of a dictionary is to define words. A word with a thousand definitions is not defined. It is the opposite of defined. If a word has several diverging meanings, perhaps it's time to create more words.
Super valid point, especially if you're doing what keenmaster does (wish I could tag him). Frankly, I've got FOMO when reading long stuff that interests me
I was also thinking about how useful chdaniel's layers would be when it's more practical to just skim.