Doing The Math

You may, our of curiosity want to know what your average reading speed is. Find a book, or magazine that has longer, more flowing paragraphs. Stay away from anything with a lot of breaks in paragraphs. In other words, put down Cosmopolitan and try TIME magazine. You are going to be timing yourself based on how much you can read in an hour.

So you may want to get comfortable. Read until time is up, then count how many pages you were able to get through. You can approximate the number of words on a page by selecting a few random sentences and counting the words, then count the lines on that page and multiply.
Next, multiply your word count by the number of pages you read and divide by sixty minutes.

For example: You read five pages in one hour that had approximately 144 words on each page. Multiplying those two numbers together equals 720, divided by 60 and you get 12. Ta-da! Your average reading speed! You can read twelve words per minute. Is this good or bad? You can check your score against others by searching online. There is software available for those who desire to increase their average reading speed.