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Comment by nilkn | Hacker News Reader

> I wonder if people really read one word at a time

They don't. I always thought the whole point of speed reading was to ingest multiple words simultaneously.

These speed reading tools should be extended so that they can show multiple words at once rather than one word at a time. A really ambitious improvement would be to automatically recognize very common phrases and constructions and to make an effort to always show those as single groups.

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> These speed reading tools should be extended so that they can show multiple words at once rather than one word at a time.

http://spreeder.com/ allows you to put in multiple words.

However, if the code for this is available for anyone to edit/modify, perhaps anyone wanting that feature could add it.

For me it depends on the content and my mood. With my app [0] I read at about 5-600wpm, whether it's 1, 2 or 3 words at a time. If I'm having trouble with a particular article, changing the number of words often fixes it. Though of course, for some content, I need to drop the WPM (esp when there's a lot of technical and/or unfamiliar terms).

[0]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hughesoft....

Good point! The tool should create a reading difficulty score and only offer selecting wpm, if it's beneficial.

Readability tests:

    * Accelerated Reader ATOS
    * Automated Readability Index (ARI)
    * Coleman-Liau Index
    * Dale-Chall Readability Formula
    * Flesch-Kincaid readability tests:
        * Flesch Reading Ease
        * Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
    * Fry Readability Formula
    * Gunning-Fog Index
    * Lexile Framework for Reading
    * Linsear Write
    * LIX
    * Raygor Estimate Graph
    * SMOG (Simple Measure Of Gobbledygook)
    * Spache Readability Formula

Tool: https://readability-score.com/ Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readability_test#Readability_te...

Totally right!! I trained myself to read two lines at once, but a tool that takes the burden of putting the pieces of the sentences together in the mind would be very very welcome! It could display two words ontop of each other that would otherwise be next to each other.

UX shows that this is the most digestable way to consume information. Going vertical should be preferred over going horizontal.

Please please somebody, would you give nilkn's idea an ear?

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