How to Calculate Reading Speed

One of the first steps in any journey of increasing your reading speed has to be getting a baseline of your current reading speed. From here, you can periodically test yourself and understand how your speed improves with some basic practice as outlined in my intro blog post.

Steps to Calculate Your Reading Speed in Words Per Minute (WPM)

It is recommended to select reading material that is fairly light and with limited complexity, such as a work of fiction, as opposed to something like a medical journal or technical document.

  1. First, you need to calculate how many words per line (WPL) are in your reading material. To do so, count the number of words in 3 lines and then divide that number by 3 - (number of words / number of lines)

  2. Calculate lines read over time. Read for a set amount of time. Two minutes is enough. Count the number of lines you read by the amount of time you read - (number of lines / time read)

  3. Multiple your WPL from step 1 by the number of lines read in step two - (WPL * words over time = WPM)

Example:

  • 41 words in 3 lines: 41 / 3 = 13.6 WPL

  • Read for 2 mins, 60 lines read: 60 / 2 = 30 lines per minute

  • Multiply WPL x lines per minute: 13.6 * 30 = 408 WPM

Questions on this? Don’t hesitate to reach out to me on email or via Threads! I’ll be building out my page to include more sections on speed reading over time. I’d love your feedback!