Skim, read, or must-read

Every summary in your morning letter ends with a verdict: Must-read, Worth reading, or Skim. It is the part most people act on, so it is worth knowing how we get there.

The question behind it

The verdict does not grade how good a piece is. It answers a narrower question: now that you have read the summary, how much is left in the original? Some pieces give up nearly everything to a summary. Others give up almost nothing.

Skim

The summary gives you the real value, and you can move on. Listicles, roundups, link posts, and thin or promotional pieces usually land here. If a piece is mostly a pitch, the verdict says so in plain words.

An example: a post titled "Ten tools every founder needs". The summary names the three that matter, and you are done.

Worth reading

Worth opening in full if the subject matters to you right now. A solid analysis of a market you work in, a long review of a book you are thinking about, or a guide to something you are about to do. The summary tells you whether it is live for you today.

Must-read

Rewards your full attention this morning. It is marked in red and put at the top of the letter. A piece earns it in one of two ways: it is so dense with specifics that a summary strips out what matters, or its value lives in reading it, not in its facts.

Why essays are never a skim

A summary can carry an analytical article's claims. It cannot deliver a personal essay, a memoir, a great talk, or writing whose worth is in its voice. Those pieces can look thin if you only count their facts, which is exactly the wrong way to judge them. So we judge the kind of piece first. Something you saved to sit with is never marked as a skim because it has few facts.

The reason line

Next to every verdict is a short reason: what kind of piece it is and who it is for. If you disagree with a verdict, the reason is usually where you will see why, and you are always one tap from the original.