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Comment by ebiester | Hacker News Reader

I think of it the other way around. While I didn't get much from the 800wpm level, I found the training on not backtracking and understanding the eye movements allowed me to understand better, not worse, and still allowed me to stop at my leisure. It's less that I'm rushing through the book and more that I'm being more intentional about it.

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    I found training on not backtracking and understanding eye movements allowed me to understand better ...

What did you train in regards to backtracking & eye movement? It seems vaguely familiar to how I read (backtracking over paragraphs pretty frequently) -- is there some reading I can do on this?

Tony Buzan's speed reading book brings this up, particularly the eye movement.

The eye has two types of movement: the one you use to move from one object to another; and then the one that follows an object. He recommends the latter when speed reading, using a pen or pointy thing as an aid, your eyes following the tip as you sweep it across the page. You can move it from side to side, or down the middle, or zig-zagging, etc.

You accompany this with a metronome, to move the pen in regular movements.

I think in time the idea is that you can abandon the pen and metronome once you've got used to reading this way.

Aren't saccades inevitable unless actually tracking something?

Maybe. One could try imagining an invisible line and tracking that. It helps not to focus on the text itself, but on the space just above the page, just as the tip of pen would be hovering above the page as it sweeps across. That way the eye doesn't fixate on words and cause saccades.

One way to address backtracking is to use a tool like BeeLine Reader [1]. It wraps text in a color gradient that flows from one line to the next.

1: http://www.beelinereader.com/individual

Note: I am the founder

That's my understanding too. Speed reading is not just about reader faster, but reading more comfortably, avoiding tiring out the eyes by using them more effectively, thereby aiding both comprehension and retention.

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