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On this blog, both title and the first paragraph say: Don't/shouldn't read too much.

China's Defence Ministry said today people shouldn't read too much into a state media broadcast of live-fire military and landing drills, just days after a landslide election win by an independence-leaning opposition party in Taiwan.

Now, to my mind, this phrase is not written in literal meaning here, and I could not find it in any dictionary. Is it an idiom? What is the meaning of this phrase in the given context? Is it written to tell people should not bother about it? It's confusing for me.

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    See read something into something.
    – user3169
    Jan 23, 2016 at 5:21
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    @User3169 The OP has performed a dictionary search. Why not make your answer an answer? The question should remain open because it's reasonable for ELLs to require assistance in looking up idiomatic expressions, especialy when it's necessary to extract an idiom out of its context.
    – Jim Reynolds
    Jan 23, 2016 at 11:23
  • @JimReynolds I suppose, though if you do a Google search on "read too much into" you would find the answer. BTW, I did not close vote this one.
    – user3169
    Jan 23, 2016 at 17:52
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    @user3169 I wrote poorly and only intended to suggest you could submit an answer if you wanted. The rest was a general comment. To respond, though, it's perfectly reasonable to suppose that someone who has this question might google read too much, should/(n't) read too much, etc. In fact, while there's a gray area, few are the good questions that can't be answered by googling! It's also intelligent to consider that not all users have access to google.com, or that some users might get different results than other users, due to censorship, network administration rules, or language settings.
    – Jim Reynolds
    Jan 24, 2016 at 6:31
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    To be clear, I mean that someone might reasonably not know how to search for this or other phrases with the seach terms that will return an easily accessible answer. Or, they might face some barrier that isn't obvious. There's no rule saying only skilled researchers can ask questions!
    – Jim Reynolds
    Jan 24, 2016 at 6:51

1 Answer 1

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To read into something means to assume more than what is explicitly written or said.

read something into something
to give your own meaning to something rather than what was intended
Experts warned against reading too much into Friday's election results. People can read into his comments anything they want to, but no decision has been made.

Usage notes: usually used with too much or anything, as in the examples

See the above and additional definitions at: The Free Dictionary

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