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February 4, 2007 9:31 AM

Is there a correct speed for reading?

I know that you shouldn’t be too slow or too fast, so that people are able to understand you, but when you’re reading to yourself, or are typing something that is going to be read by others (such as on Metafilter), how fast should the average reader read it? Is this based solely on personal preference, or is there some standard that one should maintain?

posted by hadjiboy to writing & language (14 comments total)

Read however fast you want. Why would there be a standard for how fast you read to yourself?
posted by borkencode at 9:40 AM on February 4, 2007

In order:

As fast as they want to, yes, no.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:41 AM on February 4, 2007

Why would there be a standard for how fast you read to yourself?

It just feels different when you read it at different speeds.

I have a disorder which makes me go between extremes, so I was just wondering how the "normal" people read it I guess.
posted by hadjiboy at 9:48 AM on February 4, 2007

I think it depends on what you are reading and why you are reading. Light fiction I fly through, not so with someone like Pynchon. Some articles I skim, but often when I want to retain information from a non-fiction book I will study chapter titles, subheadings, paragraph leads, the last paragraphs of sections, etc. even before starting to read.

If switching speeds makes reading more enjoyable, or has a point (shooting over dull, simple, or previously known material), why not? I know I shift speeds.

On the other hand I have a friend who reads extremely fast, we often trade books, and I think she misses some subtleties and pleasures in the phrasing and voice of the material.
posted by kingfisher, his musclebound cat at 10:07 AM on February 4, 2007

Right, there is no set "speed" at which you should read (unless you are reading to an audience). However, the more in-depth you want to understand something, the slower you should read it. For example, you might read the sports page very quickly, but you would read a long, anonymously-posted, personal-relations AskMe question more slowly to more precisely understand the situation of the asker, and you would read a lyrical poem slower still as it would be the most dense and rich of these three examples.
posted by taliaferro at 10:08 AM on February 4, 2007

I've never tried to moderate reading speed, occasionally I try to read "faster" and it seems to work, but I don't really pay much attention to how fast I read.
posted by delmoi at 10:09 AM on February 4, 2007

It's possible to speed read, but there's a tough barrier that you have to overcome, called "subvocalization." When you read, you actually sound out the whole word in your mind, silently. So it's really hard to read much faster than you speak.

It is possible to read without doing this. For example, have someone write a really long word on a piece of paper. Have them flash it in front of you for a fraction of a second. You can see and understand the word before you have had time to sound the entire word out in your mind. The problem is when you are trying to do it on a massive scale. When you're flying through pages of text, it's hard to see, understand, process, and put in context all of those words.

I took a speedreading class and was never able to overcome subvocalization. I gues it takes practice. Maybe you should start with light reading, like corny romance novels.
posted by HotPatatta at 10:35 AM on February 4, 2007

I normally subvocalize when I read, but oddly enough it's often the case that I can increase my comprehension by focusing intensely and speed reading without subvocalizing (i.e. just sort of scanning paragraph with an active attitude of mind focused on absorbing necessary/useful meaning). I learned this in a study skills class in college. I don't often do it, but it seems to work when I remember, and it certainly saves time.

It's easy to read slowly with full sobvocalization and not retain anything at all because 90% of your mind is wandering off thinking of other things while 10% of your mind is making your eyes move and your speech center repeat. By contrast, the focused speed reading keeps your attention focused, hence increased retention.
posted by alms at 10:43 AM on February 4, 2007

It's personal preference. When I'm reading fiction, or engrossing non-fiction it's virtual reality. I jack in and lose all sense of self and real time and space. If it's poetry, or prose clearly designed for reading aloud then I deliberately subvocalize, which slows the process down greatly.

For message board postings, I skim, looking for the good stuff.
posted by Manjusri at 12:10 PM on February 4, 2007

If I am studying and need to understand it, or just really like it, I will read at the same speed I talk. If it is boring and I need to understand it, I will read it out loud a bit faster than I normally talk.
posted by magikker at 12:34 PM on February 4, 2007

For subtelties, meaning, effect, I tend to read slowly... 300-500 words per minute. When reading conversations that I want to savor, slower than that.

Math, depending on how much I need to think, reason, associate, probably no more than 5-10 pages per hour, max.

Poetry, as slow as needed and a lot of re-reads.

Newspaper articles, blogs, on-line junk... 1000+ WPM.

I just read a book a lot of whose content I knew, and I 'budgeted' 15 seconds per page.

There is an inverse relationship for me regarding recall versus reading speed, but it is slight. I don't find reading slower gives me much more recall. I DO find that pleasure reading is best done slowly, work reading, blazingly fast. For instance, if I am going through a data sheet, I am usually looking for specific things, I know exactly what to ignore, and usually, exactly what I am seeking, and 20 pages of data sheet can be ingested in maybe 3-5 minutes, with a fair amout of recall.

It's situational and you should feel comfortable adjusting to circumstances. Walking, running, sprinting, jogging, skipping are all appropriate for moving your body, but they have tradeoffs. Ditto reading.... explore different styles. The important thing to do is read a lot!
posted by FauxScot at 2:38 PM on February 4, 2007

W.r.t. subvocalizing: I've always read fast, and never subvocalized, and it used to confuse me when people talked about it - why would you do that? Then I learned that one of the techniques to break that habit is to hum or sing (silently) to yourself as you read, which I was doing anyway ...

I do subvocalize as I write, though. Keeps me thinking slowly enough to write coherently.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 6:00 PM on February 4, 2007

The scholarly research section from the Wikipedia article on speed reading has the money quote: "Empirical research on reading rate indicates that reading for comprehension is best achieved at 200-350 words per minute. This has been found to be constant for all competent readers (Homa 1983)"
posted by benign at 9:30 PM on February 4, 2007

There are computer programs that flash words on the screen 1-3 words at a time. The idea is that you can actually read well over a thousand words per minute, if you don't stop to let your eyes move. (Because you can't see when your eyes are moving. Seriously. Try it.)

Interesting idea, though I'm not sure how much credence there is to it. I used to play with such a program quite a bit on my Cybiko. I found that I actually could read and comprehend extremely quickly, but I could only do this for 5-10 minutes in one sitting before I got a headache.

As for paper reading, I read far more than most people, but I never really got past speaking speed.
posted by roll truck roll at 1:55 AM on February 6, 2007