What is reading for gist?

Gist is the overall meaning, the core idea, the main idea of a spoken or written discourse. When we take a quick look at a written text to establish its genre and the main message that its writer means to get across, we're reading for gist.

A text can provide readers with lots of clues that help readers quickly establish what it's all about. These needn't be just the words. A quick glance at the arrangement – densely written columns, for example – can tell us that we're looking at a newspaper article, even when it's been reproduced in an exam paper. This texts explains what reading for gist is.

This reading strategy is also known as: