Reading apps, blogs and speed reading courses often say the average adult reads 300 words a minute. A review of 190 studies with 18,573 readers found something lower: about 238 words a minute for non-fiction and about 260 for fiction (Brysbaert, 2019). So where did 300 come from?
The 300 figure came from fast readers on short pages
Early tests timed small groups of university students on single pages. In 1901, the fastest silent readers in one group of 20 students reached 493 words a minute. Textbooks later set norms of 300 to 350, and a large 1960s survey of 12,143 readers put college students at about 280. Short texts make everyone look faster, which is part of the problem.
When people timed themselves reading whole novels of about 107,000 words, only 11 of 48 went above 300 words a minute. The same review explains all of this history.
Your speed depends on why you are reading
Reading to remember is much slower. When people knew they would be quizzed without the text, speeds of 93 to 150 words a minute were common, and studying a text ran at about 54 words a minute against 189 for ordinary reading of the same kind of text.
Skimming is the other end. Racing through a newspaper can work out at hundreds of words a minute, but researchers don’t count that as reading, because people miss most of what was said.
| What you are doing | Typical speed |
|---|---|
| Studying to remember | about 50 to 150 words a minute |
| Reading aloud | about 183 words a minute |
| Reading non-fiction silently | about 238 words a minute |
| Reading fiction silently | about 260 words a minute |
Fiction is faster mostly because its words are shorter
The average word in fiction is about 4.2 letters long, against 4.6 in non-fiction. That difference alone predicts most of the gap. Hard texts slow people down too: in one study, easy texts ran at about 262 words a minute and hard ones at about 182.
A second language costs about 10% to 17%
Good Dutch and English bilinguals read a novel about 17% slower in English than in Dutch. The gap grows a lot for people still learning a language. If you read 140 words a minute in your second language, that is normal.
What nobody knows yet
Most of these numbers are for English. Speeds differ by language and the review’s adjustments didn’t fit Dutch well. There is also no single large dataset on how reading speed changes with age; the review only says a drop isn’t expected in healthy adults before about 60 to 65.
Questions people ask
Is 140 words a minute slow? For ordinary non-fiction it is below the usual 175 to 300 range, but it is normal when you are reading to remember or reading in a second language.
Why do read time estimates use 300? It is an old figure from short text tests. A large review of modern studies puts most adults nearer 238.
Can I read 600 words a minute and understand it all? Unlikely. A major review found that big jumps in speed almost always cost understanding (Rayner and others, 2016).
Want to see your own speed?
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There is also a free Monthly Challenge for adults 18+, with US$100 for the live round winner.
Sources
- Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language 109. doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047 (the history, study speeds, word length, second language and reading aloud figures above all come from this review and the studies it covers)
- Rayner, K. and others (2016). So much to read, so little time. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17(1). doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267