An adult reads about 238 words per minute silently in English non-fiction, according to a meta-analysis of 190 studies (Brysbaert, 2019). To estimate how long an article takes, divide its word count by that rate: a 2,000-word piece takes about eight and a half minutes.
That is an average, not a target: speed varies with the person, the language and the text. Below is where the number comes from, a table for estimating, and a calculation a feed won't let you do.
This guide is part of A guide to saving articles and reading them later, which organizes every guide on the topic.
How many words per minute does an adult read?
Marc Brysbaert's meta-analysis, published in 2019 in the Journal of Memory and Language, pooled 190 studies with 18,573 participants. It estimated that adults read silently at 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, in English. Most adults read non-fiction at 175 to 300 words per minute and fiction at 200 to 320. Reading aloud, the average drops to 183.
The same paper notes that these figures are lower than the 300 words per minute often quoted, and that rates are lower for children, older adults and people reading in a second language.
Is reading speed the same in other languages?
Not exactly. Brysbaert explains that reading rates in other languages are predicted reasonably well by how many words a language needs to say the same thing as English. A study using equivalent texts in 17 languages, read aloud by 25 native speakers aged 18 to 35 per language, measured 228 words per minute in English, 218 in Spanish and 181 in Brazilian Portuguese (Trauzettel-Klosinski and Dietz, 2012). Because that was reading aloud, silent reading is usually faster.
For a practical estimate, using the 175 to 300 words-per-minute range is more honest than a single exact number.
A table for estimating how long an article takes
Made by KeepAnalog with words ÷ rate, rounded to the minute, using the meta-analysis's three non-fiction rates: slow (175), average (238) and fast (300).
| Text length | At 175 words/min | At 238 words/min | At 300 words/min | | ------------ | ---------------- | ---------------- | ---------------- | | 800 words | 5 min | 3 min | 3 min | | 1,500 words | 9 min | 6 min | 5 min | | 3,000 words | 17 min | 13 min | 10 min | | 5,000 words | 29 min | 21 min | 17 min | | 10,000 words | 57 min | 42 min | 33 min |
To count an article's words, paste it into Google Docs and open Tools > Word count (Google help). Some sites already show a reading time: Medium, for example, bases it on roughly 265 words per minute (Medium), a bit faster than the meta-analysis average.
Why an issue has a reading time and a feed does not
The calculation only works if the text ends. A feed refreshes itself and has no total, so there is no way to know how long "finishing" it would take. A closed selection does have one. For example, ten 1,500-word articles add up to 15,000 words: at 238 per minute, about an hour and three minutes. Knowing that in advance lets you decide whether to read them in one afternoon or over a week. What changes, and what doesn't, when reading has an ending is covered in scrolling or reading with an ending.
KeepAnalog turns public links chosen by one person into a printed issue for Argentina; each link must resolve to an HTML page or a PDF to be included. Before putting a selection like that together, the table above gives you a sense of how much reading time you are collecting. If your saved articles pile up without you returning to them, see saving is not returning.
Frequently asked questions
How many words per minute does the average person read?
Silently, about 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, according to a meta-analysis of 190 studies in English (Brysbaert, 2019). Most adults fall between 175 and 300 words per minute for non-fiction.
How long does it take to read 1,000 words?
About 4 minutes at the average rate of 238 words per minute, and between 3 and 6 minutes within the usual 175 to 300 range (Brysbaert, 2019). A difficult text or one in another language can take longer.
Does speed reading work?
A 2016 review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest concluded that claims of reading at very high speed with good comprehension are overstated: in trained speed readers, more speed came with less comprehension. What does produce modest gains is practice, reading varied texts and building vocabulary (Rayner and colleagues, 2016).
For now, KeepAnalog's pilot is in Argentina only, with no delivery in the United States.