Comments | sandial: So Much to Read, So Little Time

sandial

So Much to Read, So Little Time

Jan 30, 2010 10:17

There's some debate at how well conventional speed-reading techniques really work. You've probably heard the classic Woody Allen line, "I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia ( Read more... )

Comments 3

womzilla February 4 2010, 03:05:32 UTC

I first encountered this concept back in the late 1990s using a single-character, not single-word, reader. Amazingly high speeds were quite comprehensible.

sandial February 4 2010, 03:36:09 UTC

Wow, that is amazing.

I'm guessing it was done that way to prove a point rather than because they couldn't manage whole words, right?

If you'd like to play with RSVP, another option, besides that flawed Firefox add-on I mentioned, is the free trial version of AceReader from Stepware (http://www.acereader.com/), which has an RSVP module.

I suggested to Tom Becker that maybe he could develop an iPhone/iPod/iPad RSVP app. We'll see if he finds the time.

womzilla February 5 2010, 02:07:54 UTC

"I'm guessing it was done that way to prove a point rather than because they couldn't manage whole words, right?"

Right. The idea behind fixed-point reading is to reduce unnecessary eye movement as one reads. Words are of such tremendously different widths that it takes more time to process them than to process a single character.