(no subject)

[wispfox]

OK, random reading speed test thingy that ladytabitha posted a link to.

http://mindbluff.com/askread2.htm

43 seconds for the first... (reading at light fiction speed, although still reading every word. Gods, that was a boring story! Entirely too many details about the house!)

700 - 750 w/m for the second, reading at non-scientific textbook speed.

And I don't know how much the fact that I'm exhausted and not reading a paper book affects those. I read faster when I'm not tired, and I _think_ I read faster when reading on paper rather than a computer screen.

Neat!

Comments

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The politicky part didn't help my speed, either.

And yeah, on the scrolling. That might be why I thought I read better with paper.

Not sure I noticed the narrow column so much. Hmm...

[bridgetester.livejournal.com]

*nods* People read demonstrably faster when it's something they're interested in. (Of course, that can also mean that they know bits of it and can skim too.) This interest=motivation is a significant problem for English classes (let alone any other class with textbooks), when people don't care about the topic they're reading about...

Paper can help, yes. To an extent, larger typefaces (with sufficent spacing) help electronic reading. Also, appropriate column width (i.e. user-adjustable).

Scrolling could be seen as analogous to turning the pages, for instance.

The worst ebooks are the ones that try to simulate the page model too closely, especially on-line. They should provide an option for scrolling and an option for a one or two-page spread.

Acrobat is the best I've seen for preserving print typography, illustrations, footnotes, and other formatting. But it has its problems too (spacing, font size, etc). Also, editing Acrobat documents is a major pain. It's about as easy to regenerate them from an edited source document...