When you’re looking, say for instance a car service phone directory, you don’t read every listing, do you? Instead you skip over a lot of unrelated information and scan for a visual image of the name of the company on the relevant page. It’s like looking for a friend at a football game. You do not look at each individual face across every row of seats. Because you have a visual image of your friends face, you scan the audience until you see him. Scanning printed words is similiar to this. 

               You scan to locate a single fact  or a specific bit of information without reading in the whole text material, or even in just a chapter. Perhaps you have a list of terms that you know are going to be on the next biology test. You have already encountered them during the lecture in class so while reviewing, you just look up each word in the index, go to the given page number, and scan for just that word. When you find them, you read the sentence in which they appear. If it is not clear to you, then you may want to read the entire paragraph.        

               You scan by flipping through the pages to see how the information is organized. It may be alphabetical, chronological, topical categories from most important to least important, or the standard essay format of introduction, body, and conclusion. Turn to the section most likely to contain the specified details. Keep a visual image of the key word in mind. Run your eyes over the material in a search for that keyword visual image. Don’t be tempted to stop and browse, you can do that some other time.