What is the average reading speed, and how fast do you read?

What is the average reading speed for adults?

The number most often cited today comes from a 2019 meta-analysis by the psycholinguist Marc Brysbaert, who pooled many studies of silent reading in adults. For English nonfiction the average came out near 238 words per minute, and for fiction near 260. Those are averages across many readers and texts, so half of all adults read faster and half slower.

Older estimates were higher. Edmund Huey's early twentieth-century tests, described in the Wikipedia article on words per minute, reported about 355 words per minute for silent reading under his method. Different texts, tests and decades produce different numbers, which is why a single universal figure is a bad guide for you. Use it as a rough anchor.

How do you test your own speed?

A short test is more useful than any average. It takes five minutes.

Repeat on a different kind of book. You will probably find that a thriller reads faster than a history book, and that your speed drops when you are tired. Those differences are normal and useful for planning.

1. Choose a text you would normally read, in the format you would normally read it.
2. Set a timer for five minutes and read at your usual pace, with no skimming.
3. Count the pages or screens you covered, and note roughly how many words are on each.
4. Divide the words by five to get words per minute, or the pages by five and multiply by 12 for pages per hour.

What affects reading speed?

Several things, and most of them are not about skill.

Practice does help. Wikipedia's article on reading notes that repeated exposure to print improves fluency, mainly because common words are recognized faster.

• Text difficulty: dense prose, unfamiliar names and technical vocabulary all slow you down.
• Purpose: reading to enjoy, to study and to find a fact produce three different speeds.
• Format: a printed page, a phone screen and an e-ink display feel different, and many readers are slower on small screens.
• State: fatigue and distraction cost more speed than anything else.

Does speed reading work?

Mostly not, at least not the dramatic claims. Courses that promise 1,000 words per minute or more usually trade comprehension for speed. Cognitive scientists quoted in the same Wikipedia article on reading say such claims run against what we know about eye movements and comprehension. Skimming is a real skill and useful for finding things, but it is not the same as reading a novel.

A gentler goal is to remove obstacles: read in quiet, hold the book steadily, and avoid rereading lines out of distraction. These small changes can raise your effective speed without any trick.

How can you use your reading speed?

Planning is the main benefit. Once you know your pace, you can estimate how long a book will take, set a realistic finish date and choose books that fit a trip. If you know you read 50 pages an hour, a 400-page book is about eight hours, which is three or four evenings.

Bookstub, an iPhone reading tracker in development, has a full-screen timer that keeps counting from its start time, even if the phone locks. Press Stop and log, and the minutes attach to the page you reached. Over several sessions, you build your own pages-per-hour figure instead of guessing. The log a page page describes the timer in detail.

Is faster reading better reading?

Not by itself. A slower read of a book you love often leaves a stronger memory than a fast read of a book you tolerate. Speed is a tool for finishing the books you want to finish and for moving quickly through the ones you do not. Slow down for sentences you want to remember.

Does reading on a screen change your speed?

Studies of screen reading give mixed results, and the answer depends on the device and the person. Small phone screens show fewer lines at once, so you tap or scroll more often, and that interrupts the flow for some readers. E-ink readers sit closer to paper in how they feel. Backlit screens at night can tire your eyes sooner.

You can test this too. Run the five-minute test on paper and on your phone, using similar text. If the phone is much slower, save it for short reading sessions and keep a paperback for long ones. If it is the same, use whichever one is closest.

What about reading in another language?

Speed drops in a second language, often sharply, and the drop is not a sign of poor ability. Vocabulary, familiarity with sentence structure and cultural references all matter. Published averages for English do not apply to Spanish, Japanese or Russian, because writing systems and word lengths differ.

If you read in two languages, keep a separate pages-per-hour figure for each. A plan to finish a 300-page novel in 14 days assumes a pace you may not have in your second language, and adding a few days is sensible.

How do you read faster without speed reading?

Small habits help more than tricks.

• Read at the same time each day so that you start in the mood.
• Put the phone out of reach, since interruptions cost more than slow words.
• Stop rereading sentences out of habit. If you lose the thread, keep going for a paragraph before you go back.
• Choose books at the right level. A book that is a little too hard is slow for everyone.