Red herring

• a dried, smoked, herring. The curing process turns the fish red.
• a type of logical fallacy
• in finance, a prelimary prospectus for an offering of stock, so called for the notice in red type required by law at the top of the front page
• a brief for venture capitalists to tempt them into following up with investment in the business plan
• Red Herring, a business magazine founded in the dot-com boom of the 1990s, when venture capitalists and business plans abounded.
• in literature, a plot device intended to distract the reader from a more important event in the plot, usually a twist ending.