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"You should take just under two-and-a-half minutes to finish reading this blog post." Does that include the time taken up by dismissing the "subscribe!" pop-up

"You should take just under two-and-a-half minutes to finish reading this blog post." Does that include the time taken up by dismissing the "subscribe!" pop-up, and figuring out where you were when you got distracted by that?

kazinator 7y ago
Didn't see that at all (I'm a user of the NoScript browser extension that allows JS only from explicitly whitelisted sites). I went through the content in about 30 seconds. What I remember: 1. "People read at closer to 240 wpm rather than 300 as was previously thought." 2. This was from a meta-study gathered over various studies spanning the twentieth century, in various languages based on the Roman alphabet. 3. There appears to be some variation in reading speed dependent on language.
- adverbly 7y ago
  I was just under two minutes and I'd have added the following by memory: - Spanish readers are faster than English - A key reason for the discrepancy between previously measured reading speeds and the new results is recreational vs test-style assessment. Basically it sounds like people read faster when they are being assessed on their reading. - It should take about 2 minutes and 30 seconds to finish reading the article. And then doing a 30 second skim a second time I would have added the following: - Reading speed depends on if the text is long or short. Shorter text can be much slower. - Reading speed declines with age. A third skim and I'd add: - this is important for assessors, who shouldn't expect everyone to read at 300wpm. Looking back and comparing my notes across the three reads I actually remember recognizing each one of those points the first time through, but I didn't reliably remember them all after each run. I almost think this might have more to do with the way that memory works than the way reading works.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

kazinator 7y ago

Didn't see that at all (I'm a user of the NoScript browser extension that allows JS only from explicitly whitelisted sites). I went through the content in about 30 seconds. What I remember: 1. "People read at closer to 240 wpm rather than 300 as was previously thought." 2. This was from a meta-study gathered over various studies spanning the twentieth century, in various languages based on the Roman alphabet. 3. There appears to be some variation in reading speed dependent on language.

adverbly 7y ago
I was just under two minutes and I'd have added the following by memory: - Spanish readers are faster than English - A key reason for the discrepancy between previously measured reading speeds and the new results is recreational vs test-style assessment. Basically it sounds like people read faster when they are being assessed on their reading. - It should take about 2 minutes and 30 seconds to finish reading the article. And then doing a 30 second skim a second time I would have added the following: - Reading speed depends on if the text is long or short. Shorter text can be much slower. - Reading speed declines with age. A third skim and I'd add: - this is important for assessors, who shouldn't expect everyone to read at 300wpm. Looking back and comparing my notes across the three reads I actually remember recognizing each one of those points the first time through, but I didn't reliably remember them all after each run. I almost think this might have more to do with the way that memory works than the way reading works.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]