Speed reader

How to use it#

1. Paste or type the text you want to read into the box, or open a .txt or .md file with Open file or by dropping it on the box. Try a sample in the empty reader shows how it works.
2. Set the speed in words a minute, anywhere from 100 to 1,000, and choose the font, the size, and how many words show at a time.
3. Press Play, or click the reader. Click again or press the space bar to pause.
4. Use Previous sentence and Next sentence to jump a sentence, or drag the bar to any place in the text. Full screen hides everything else, and Exit full screen at its top brings the page back.

How reading one word at a time works#

Reading a page, your eyes jump along each line in short hops, stopping on most words for a fraction of a second, and they jump back now and then to reread. Showing the words one after another in a single place takes the hops away: the eyes rest on one spot and each word arrives there. The technique is called rapid serial visual presentation, or RSVP.

Each word is placed so the letter the eye naturally lands on, a little left of its middle, sits at the centre of the reader every time. Mark the focus letter colours it, and the two small ticks above and below show where it is. With two or three words at a time, the group is centred instead.

Choosing a speed#

Most adults read ordinary prose silently at around 200 to 300 words a minute. Start at about that speed, read a paragraph or two, and raise it in steps of 25 or 50 until you notice you are following less of what you read. That point is your ceiling for this kind of text, and it will be lower for a contract than for a news story. For speed reading practice, read a few minutes at a time just above it, and settle on the words per minute (WPM) at which you still follow what you read.

Pause at commas and full stops holds a word longer when it ends a clause, longer still at the end of a sentence, and longest at the end of a paragraph, and gives long words a moment more. That gap is where you take in what was just said, and reading with it on usually feels slower than the number says but leaves more behind. Whole text and Time left count those pauses, so they are the real times at your settings.

What it is good for, and what it is not#

One word at a time suits text read once from start to finish: an article, a long email, a report you need the gist of, or a book chapter. It is also a way to keep going through text you would otherwise skim, since nothing on the screen invites the eye to wander.

It is poor at text you need to look around in. A table, a list of figures, or a page of code makes sense only laid out, and a dense argument often needs a glance back at the sentence before. Previous sentence returns to the start of the sentence for that, and pausing to think is always one click. Pasted text keeps no formatting, so headings and bullet points arrive as ordinary words.

For text in a PDF, take it out with PDF to text first and paste it here. If its lines come out broken partway through sentences, that does not matter here, since every line break inside a paragraph is read as a space.