I don't know whether to call what I do speed reading or not, but I definitely read faster than most people I know. I've spent a lot of time analyzing what things effect my reading speed.
I find that my reading speed is most heavily effected by how much my eyes have to move to scan the words in the line. The best for me is if a column is narrow enough that I don't really have to move my eyes side to side to get all the words in the column.
As an example, a Thompson Chain Reference Bible has about the perfect size columns (roughly 5-7 words per column) for me to be able to take in essentially the whole line at once, so I can just run my finger down the column and take in words about as fast as I can follow it with my eyes.
A related trick in this regard is one I believe I saw on Tim Ferris's blog which (if I remember correctly) suggested focusing on the 6 words at the beginning of a line and then the 6 words at the end of the line. For text that is too long to take in the whole line all at one glance, this seems to work pretty well for me.
> The best for me is if a column is narrow enough that I don't really have to move my eyes side to side to get all the words in the column.
Interesting. I'm the opposite way. Part of how I speed read is being able to quickly back-track if I detect that I've failed to notice something important. Filling the reading surface with text means that I almost never have to scroll around to locate what I missed.
I find that my reading speed is most heavily effected by how much my eyes have to move to scan the words in the line. The best for me is if a column is narrow enough that I don't really have to move my eyes side to side to get all the words in the column.
As an example, a Thompson Chain Reference Bible has about the perfect size columns (roughly 5-7 words per column) for me to be able to take in essentially the whole line at once, so I can just run my finger down the column and take in words about as fast as I can follow it with my eyes.
A related trick in this regard is one I believe I saw on Tim Ferris's blog which (if I remember correctly) suggested focusing on the 6 words at the beginning of a line and then the 6 words at the end of the line. For text that is too long to take in the whole line all at one glance, this seems to work pretty well for me.