I’ve been multi-tasking – taking in the Schoolhouse Expo while at the same time checking my email and google reader. I skimmed the titles of the articles in CBC news category of my Google Reader and noticed these two headlines back to back:
Fabian Manning defends return to Senate Senators re-sign Greening, Smith
I knew that Fabian Manning had been a senator in our Canadian Senate before he resigned his position to run for a district in our province in the recent federal election. He was unsuccessful in his bid for the district and there were questions about what he would do now. I hadn’t been following the news so wasn’t sure what had happened but quickly skimming the above headline I assumed he had returned to senate and there was probably some fuss about that. I clicked on the heading and read the whole article and discovered I was right.
Moving on to the next heading I skimmed and missed the all important dash in the word “re-sign” so instead of reading “re-sign” I read “resign” and jumped to the conclusion that the two names after the word must be senators that had resigned to display their disgust at Manning returning to the senate. Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the headline and read the article to find that the article was talking about hockey players re-signed to the Senators hockey team.
Lessons: skimming can cause confusion so be sure to read carefully.
