5 ms·

I feel like one of those Reddit or Twitter bots, but: the general rule is that you can read about twice as fast as you can understand spoken word - 300 vs 150

I feel like one of those Reddit or Twitter bots, but: the general rule is that you can read about twice as fast as you can understand spoken word - 300 vs 150 words per minute. I remember reading this my first day in a public speaking class in college. Just one of those factoids that’s stuck with me, and why I’ve always preferred reading articles versus seeking videos. Of course, speed of comprehension is just one consideration. I’m mindful that there are some contexts where a visual is necessary or particularly helpful, and that some folks resonate with visual/spoken word more than written. But this is why I love HN. It’s almost always a link to a written article, and I can pop open comments (which I often do first) for more written text on the subject.

saurik 5y ago
I can only speed read for a couple hours at best, as staring so close at something and carefully moving my eyes so quickly is extremely exhausting. I can read at slow speeds for a lot longer, but I am pretty sure it is still horrible for my eyes :(. Either way, it is mentally taxing, as I have to convince my brain to not start talking to itself and begin ignoring the visual input. In contrast, I can spend an entire day listening to people; and, while I am listening, I can be looking into the distance, the way human eyes are supposed to mostly be used. I can walk around, cook and eat food, or even shower, all while listening to people talk. I would argue listening to other people is a much more "human" activity than staring at symbols (despite how much I do this for my passion: software development). I also have no clue where you got those numbers from: the iPad software I have finally found to read PDFs to me has me configure it in words per minute, and I find it reasonable to understand 400 words per minute for long stretches. I bet I could go faster (this software supports 500), but it would likely be mentally taxing. To put in context how preposterous 150 words per minute is, the average person supposedly speaks at 100-130 words per minute according to some random source I just found (which feels right as I took years of linguistics and was going to guess 110-120), and we know people routinely listen to videos at 2x (and so are hitting 200-260). (I think it is also worth noting that actual speed reading is a skill most people do not have. I actually think it quite likely that your average person can read only as fast as they can speak, as I bet that people who are not really really good at reading are subvocalizing. I feel like a lot of people don't consider this when saying everyone should read all the time.)
- ghufran_syed 5y ago
  What is the name of the ipad reading software you use? I tried using the basic text to speech but can’t figure out how to tell it how to start reading at a point and keep going. Being able to tap to rewind 10 seconds would also be useful
  - saurik 5y ago
    Voice Dream Reader. Given the issues you cite this will be perfect. I really appreciated that it models your progress through the document as "time" as it knows how long it would take to read the whole thing. The only thing I am disliking is that the act of highlight text for something like bookmarking is extremely slow and fidgety (it has word issue like trying to highlight the last character on a line is extremely difficult as the hit test only verifies you are on the right edge of a character, but if you go past the character there is no hit box so it doesn't recognize anything, causing you to have to wiggle your finger on the last character trying to intersect that narrow hit box; it mostly seems to rely on you touching through the character after the character you want to highlight, but there isn't one at the end of a line... they need to like, scan left and see if there is a character to the left of your finger to make this easier).
tluyben2 5y ago
This might be different per person? When people talk, I lose concentration after a few minutes, when I read I hold concentration for hours. For me videos and podcasts are the worst for information transfer. Sure I can probably process more, but it stops after minutes for me. Like someone else said; it depends on the subject of course: fixing an issue with a washing machine (not operation, but with the internal electrics or something), a video is faster but otherwise...
- thathndude 5y ago
  Agreed. That’s why I thought I’d give a shout out to the fact that these are all generalizations: “I’m mindful that there are some contexts where a visual is necessary or particularly helpful, and that some folks resonate with visual/spoken word more than written.“ Strangely, I was never a reader as a child, but took to it as an adult.
sabas123 5y ago
With the exception of terse definitions, my comprehension speed of fast spoken word is MUCH better then reading. But I'm probably an outlier in this regard.
dotancohen 5y ago
> the general rule is that you can read about twice as fast as you > can understand spoken word - 300 vs 150 words per minute. In my experience the limiting factor is the speed at which one speaks, not the speed at which one listens. I can listen to a 1.5x Youtube video from any speaker comfortable, and 2x for really good speakers such as Marcus House, Scott Manley, or Destin.
jacquesm 5y ago
To me the big advantage of reading is that I can easily re-read a section without having to hunt-and-peck 30 times to find the beginning of the section that I want to repeat. Especially with difficult material I tend to go over it many times before I really grok it and doing this with video is absolutely infuriating to the point that I'll usually transcribe the video and then read the transcription, that's still faster and during the transcription process I usually learn quite a bit as well.

saurik 5y ago

I can only speed read for a couple hours at best, as staring so close at something and carefully moving my eyes so quickly is extremely exhausting. I can read at slow speeds for a lot longer, but I am pretty sure it is still horrible for my eyes :(. Either way, it is mentally taxing, as I have to convince my brain to not start talking to itself and begin ignoring the visual input. In contrast, I can spend an entire day listening to people; and, while I am listening, I can be looking into the distance, the way human eyes are supposed to mostly be used. I can walk around, cook and eat food, or even shower, all while listening to people talk. I would argue listening to other people is a much more "human" activity than staring at symbols (despite how much I do this for my passion: software development). I also have no clue where you got those numbers from: the iPad software I have finally found to read PDFs to me has me configure it in words per minute, and I find it reasonable to understand 400 words per minute for long stretches. I bet I could go faster (this software supports 500), but it would likely be mentally taxing. To put in context how preposterous 150 words per minute is, the average person supposedly speaks at 100-130 words per minute according to some random source I just found (which feels right as I took years of linguistics and was going to guess 110-120), and we know people routinely listen to videos at 2x (and so are hitting 200-260). (I think it is also worth noting that actual speed reading is a skill most people do not have. I actually think it quite likely that your average person can read only as fast as they can speak, as I bet that people who are not really really good at reading are subvocalizing. I feel like a lot of people don't consider this when saying everyone should read all the time.)

ghufran_syed 5y ago
What is the name of the ipad reading software you use? I tried using the basic text to speech but can’t figure out how to tell it how to start reading at a point and keep going. Being able to tap to rewind 10 seconds would also be useful
- saurik 5y ago
  Voice Dream Reader. Given the issues you cite this will be perfect. I really appreciated that it models your progress through the document as "time" as it knows how long it would take to read the whole thing. The only thing I am disliking is that the act of highlight text for something like bookmarking is extremely slow and fidgety (it has word issue like trying to highlight the last character on a line is extremely difficult as the hit test only verifies you are on the right edge of a character, but if you go past the character there is no hit box so it doesn't recognize anything, causing you to have to wiggle your finger on the last character trying to intersect that narrow hit box; it mostly seems to rely on you touching through the character after the character you want to highlight, but there isn't one at the end of a line... they need to like, scan left and see if there is a character to the left of your finger to make this easier).

tluyben2 5y ago

This might be different per person? When people talk, I lose concentration after a few minutes, when I read I hold concentration for hours. For me videos and podcasts are the worst for information transfer. Sure I can probably process more, but it stops after minutes for me. Like someone else said; it depends on the subject of course: fixing an issue with a washing machine (not operation, but with the internal electrics or something), a video is faster but otherwise...

thathndude 5y ago
Agreed. That’s why I thought I’d give a shout out to the fact that these are all generalizations: “I’m mindful that there are some contexts where a visual is necessary or particularly helpful, and that some folks resonate with visual/spoken word more than written.“ Strangely, I was never a reader as a child, but took to it as an adult.

sabas123 5y ago

With the exception of terse definitions, my comprehension speed of fast spoken word is MUCH better then reading. But I'm probably an outlier in this regard.

dotancohen 5y ago

> the general rule is that you can read about twice as fast as you > can understand spoken word - 300 vs 150 words per minute. In my experience the limiting factor is the speed at which one speaks, not the speed at which one listens. I can listen to a 1.5x Youtube video from any speaker comfortable, and 2x for really good speakers such as Marcus House, Scott Manley, or Destin.

jacquesm 5y ago

To me the big advantage of reading is that I can easily re-read a section without having to hunt-and-peck 30 times to find the beginning of the section that I want to repeat. Especially with difficult material I tend to go over it many times before I really grok it and doing this with video is absolutely infuriating to the point that I'll usually transcribe the video and then read the transcription, that's still faster and during the transcription process I usually learn quite a bit as well.