I don't know, I mean what is "speed reading"? Whenever I "informally" clock myself, I read at around 600 wpm +/- 100 wpm or so. If that's "just reading" surely "speed reading" should be significantly faster, say 1200 wpm at the very least?
[edit: Hm, that might have been a bit optimistic, reading the article I clocked myself at ~420. I've never really tried to time myself on a dense paper -- say the first time I read Fielding's dissertation[1] for example. I doubt I'd have read that at the same speed as a somewhat vapid article on speed reading (as the author suggest, although I'm a little taken aback that email is grouped with news as things not to read carefully -- I guess it's a sadly accurate picture of the current state of most peoples online discourse. Sinser[2] would like a word with you! ;-)
[1] "Architectural Styles and
the Design of Network-based Software Architectures" (aka that ReST thing):
I'd say 1200 wpm is below skimming speed -- and there is something in-between -- but I'm not convinced that it's terribly useful as a skill. Being able to skim an article at great speed can be useful, for deciding if it's worth reading or not. I'm not convinced "speed reading" is very useful. The very term implies you speed through material at a speed greater than comprehension (which I'll loosely equate to "regular reading speed").
I do think it can be useful to train oneself to read faster -- by reading more, and occasionally by "forcing" oneself to read faster. For those that already read at reasonable speeds (~500 wpm?) -- it's probably useful to pick up tricks for skimming, and "backwards reading": starting with the conclusion, and reading articles backwards (conclusion, discussion, introduction -- or: conclusion, introduction, discussion -- and either way, probably conclusion again).
[edit: Hm, that might have been a bit optimistic, reading the article I clocked myself at ~420. I've never really tried to time myself on a dense paper -- say the first time I read Fielding's dissertation[1] for example. I doubt I'd have read that at the same speed as a somewhat vapid article on speed reading (as the author suggest, although I'm a little taken aback that email is grouped with news as things not to read carefully -- I guess it's a sadly accurate picture of the current state of most peoples online discourse. Sinser[2] would like a word with you! ;-)
[1] "Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures" (aka that ReST thing):
https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm
[2] "On Writing Well": http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonficti... ]
I'd say 1200 wpm is below skimming speed -- and there is something in-between -- but I'm not convinced that it's terribly useful as a skill. Being able to skim an article at great speed can be useful, for deciding if it's worth reading or not. I'm not convinced "speed reading" is very useful. The very term implies you speed through material at a speed greater than comprehension (which I'll loosely equate to "regular reading speed").
I do think it can be useful to train oneself to read faster -- by reading more, and occasionally by "forcing" oneself to read faster. For those that already read at reasonable speeds (~500 wpm?) -- it's probably useful to pick up tricks for skimming, and "backwards reading": starting with the conclusion, and reading articles backwards (conclusion, discussion, introduction -- or: conclusion, introduction, discussion -- and either way, probably conclusion again).