The Professional Man and His Reading

The mean reading rate of the average educated adult is about 250 words per minute. Perhaps the top 5 per cent read twice this fast. Slow readers read no better than fast ones. Slow reading is a bad habit, and a needless waste of time. Most educated adults, in a few weeks' time, could achieve rates of four to five hundred words per minute, in their ordinary reading, and do so without loss in comprehension. The reading rate of a given person varies, of course, with a number of conditions; but the person who reads a given selection rapidly tends to read other selections at a proportional rate. Readers tend to maintain their relative ranks as material and purpose vary.