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Comment by tbrooks | Hacker News Reader

I've been using Spreeder to read online articles and long blog posts for a few years now. I'm amazed at how much information I retain from reading at 300 words/minute.

http://www.spreeder.com/app.php

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300 words/minute looks awfully slow to me. I can speak faster than that. Reading speed can be much faster than speech, especially if you get rid of subvocalization ("speaking" words in your head as you read).

I don't see the advantage of flashing a word at a time. Reading works best when the eye can scan a bunch of words simultaneously. If anything, I'd try flashing a line of text at a time.

300 wpm is average reading. Speaking at 300 wpm with clarity takes a lot of practice, and most listeners require practice to comprehend that rate of speech. Research shows that with compression (i.e. articulate speech sped up, 'contentless' gaps removed), people without training lose comprehension of spoken word at about 210 wpm.

Unless you're talking with former debaters, I'd slow down that speech a little. Even if you live in New York!

At first I thought, "Really? 300 wpm is average? I tried that setting and it's pretty slow." So I checked it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process)#Reading_rate If anything, that's the high end of average!

Holy cow. I was getting bored and consequently losing focus at 300wpm. No wonder "people" don't like to read, if a huge chunk of "people" can't even go that fast.

Unfortunately, I don't have source in front of me, but I've read some research that indicates that subvocalization is actually necessary for full comprehension, and that claims to the contrary are apocryphal. It's probably best to investigate before trying to eliminate subvocalization.

That's where I got my inspiration from, but wanted to see if I could code it myself, with the ability to have it "marquee" across, loading different amounts of words at a time, without removing words I may have (or may not have) already read.

Seems a little more usable for me using text-align right so that if I'm keeping up I don't have to track the next word jumping all over the place.

Now has text alignment preferences :D

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