When it comes to reading, you might have come across the term wpm or words per minute. But how to actually measure your reading speed?
To measure your reading speed, set the timer for 2 minutes and start reading from a fresh page. When the timer is up, mark where you left off and count all the words and divide the sum by two (2 minutes). You should get your reading speed, which is typically from 150wpm to 400wpm.
In this post, we go through the reasons why you should set the timer for 2 minutes on more, instead of just 1. As well as how to measure your reading speed more accurately.
How to accurately measure your reading speed?
In order to measure your reading speed more accurately, you should set the timer for more than just one minute, count the words afterward, and divide by the number of minutes you took.
The reason you should take more than one minute is to allow your mind to get into the reading state better. If you just measure for one minute, there might be room there when you are not reading with full focus.
Also, turning pages is also part of reading. Even though it doesn’t take long, it can still be counted as part of the equation.
I would suggest you use anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes to accurately measure your reading speed.
In this post, I go through how long it takes to read 100 pages with different reading speeds. (with test results).
How to calculate the number of words per page?
When measuring reading speed, if you are okay with a looser estimate of your reading speed, you could just set the timer for one minute and estimate the number of words on each page.
You can estimate how many words are on one page, by counting two to three rows and their word count and taking the average of those. Then count how many rows are on one page and multiply the one-row average by the number of rows.
Then you set your timer to one to three minutes and see, how many pages can you read in a given time.
What is good reading speed?
An average reading speed is around 250 words per minute. So I would say anything above 200 words per minute can be considered good, and above 300 words per minute is great.
Reading slower, such as 150 words per minute is not horrible either. By reading slower, your brain will have more time to process the information.
It will just take longer for you to finish reading a book if you read slower. On the flip side, you will likely remember a lot more details of the book, compared to someone who is skimming through the book at the speed of 500 words per minute.
The fastest readers can read up to 450 words while still understanding what they read. Speed reading is another thing, where you could read 500-700 words per minute, but you sacrifice comprehension.
How many pages should you be able to read in one hour?
When it comes to reading pages, there are other factors that matter, not just reading speed.
An average person should be able to read from 25 pages up to 60 pages per hour, depending on the book.
Some books have much longer pages with a lot more words in them.
A small paperback book might have 250 words per page, whereas larger hardcover could have 500 or more words per page.
It comes without saying that the fewer words there are on the page, and the more familiar you are with the topic, the faster you can read 50 or 100 pages.
Here is a post, where we go through some examples of how long it might take to read 50 pages for different readers.
Final thoughts
In conclusion, you can measure your reading speed simply by putting a timer on, reading until it beeps, and counting the words you managed to read.
In order to get more accurate results, you might want to set the timer for 2 or more minutes and divide the number of words by the number of minutes in the end.
This is because it might take a few valuable seconds to get into the mood of reading to get accurate results.
One way to measure your reading speed is to set up your timer and read this article again. It contains exactly 790 words, and it should take you from 2 to 5 minutes to finish.
Let us know in the comments how fast you can read.
Read also: How many pages should you read daily?
Hopefully, this was helpful, have a wonderful day!
