Reading Time (A Painful 5 MIN)

The Long and Short of It 

  I have noticed that articles available on the Internet are often accompanied by an estimate of the time it will take to read them. Why are they there? The producers must put them there for a reason. Is it because they know our time is valuable and that we want to be careful about how quickly we spend it? Or is it simply because from the link or the display we often cannot tell how long the article will be. In a print newspaper one can quickly see if the piece is a couple of paragraphs or a complete page.
   Such time notices can be useful. If we are in a hurry we only have a few minutes, but if we are looking for a diversion on a rainy day, the more minutes the better.

Words & Minutes
   Writing is generally measured by words and pages and how long it takes to produce them, not how long it takes to read them. We have all struggled to write that 5,000 word essay which we double spaced to make it look more substantial. The production of one for me, always took a long time and it likely took the professor longer to read than others, especially if it rambled like this one. Reading for grading surely takes longer than normal and a normal reading rate is assumed to be between 250-300 words per minute. The two essays above about Trump, which it takes about 20 minutes to read, probably total around 5,000 words. Too much time has been wasted on Trump.

Reading Time is Not New
   I thought that being told how long it was going to take you to read something was a new thing, like being warned about the content it contained. Such is not the case. A couple of months ago, I did a post about the Canadian version of Liberty, a popular magazine in both the U.S. and Canada (see, "Periodical Ramblings (14)." The American version informed readers of the time it would take to finish an article. This is from the Wikipedia entry for the magazine:

"A memorable feature was the "reading time," provided on the first page of each article so readers could know how long it should take to read an article, such as "No More Glitter: A Searching Tale of Hollywood and a Woman's Heart," Reading Time: 18 minutes, 45 seconds." This was calculated by a member of the editorial staff who would carefully time himself while reading an article at his usual pace; then he would take that time and double it."

From the entry you will learn that someone tested Liberty's calculations and noted that  "Liberty magazine existed in a world without television and the Internet. Time pressures on readers and potential readers change with the times."

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                              Longform"
  Lately there are also often alerts to let us know if an article is going to be long, either to warn us or to let us know we about to get something special or a lengthy investigative piece. "Long Form" or "Longform" is the new long and it also appears as "Longread" or a "Big Read". The latter is produced by the Financial Times and the former is found in Wired on Sundays and it consists of "Our deepest dives and cutting edge features that will leave you smarter and sharper." The Guardian now has a new "Long Read magazine [which] brings together the very best longform journalism, with immersive stories on everything from world affairs to philosophy, from food to crime." GQ's Long Reads are where they put their "in-depth investigative features and profiles."
   Even our 'local' London Free Press is going long on occasion, although it is short of both local stories and local reporters:
   We have good news for you if you enjoy the pleasure of savouring a weekend newspaper.
It's called Long Story. It's a new section in your newspaper, designed to get lost in.
Every Saturday, we'll print in-depth stories you won't find anywhere else. Spread over four pages with great visuals and design, you'll want to settle in and stay awhile.This week's long read is about the Canadian battle to outlaw “normalizing” genital surgeries on babies and children born intersex, meaning with bodies that aren't clearly female or male."
(Joe Ruscitti, LFP, Nov. 11, 2023.)

Exactly how long, long is, is not clear. Let us say that something longform should be over 2000 words and take you over 8 minutes to read. The "culture wars" article above would qualify, but I admit that I skipped it.

Tracking What is Read
   In the old days a newspaper publisher didn't know if you actually read it, or just used it for wrapping fish. Now our screens typically tell us how many are reading the article along with us and how popular it is. At the end of the year, Maclean's  knew which of their longform stories were most read during the year. "The End of Homeownership" was number one and it was followed by a story about Fortnite, a video game, "They Lost Their Kids to Fortnite." Knowing such metrics is not necessarily a good thing, in that the most popular is likely not the most profound.



   The publications you subscribe to probably know your reading habits. The Washington Post provided me with the statistic above and others, such as, I had read over 565 different authors and about 79 countries and what the top five were. I learned that the columnist I read most was George Will. Don't tell my friends. I read him because of the way he writes, not the way he thinks.

Sources:
   If you really want to know about reading time try: "How Many Words Do We Read Per Minute? A Review and Meta-analysis of Reading Rate," Marc Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language, Vol.109, Dec. 2019.
"Based on the analysis of 190 studies (18,573 participants), we estimate that the average silent reading rate for adults in English is 238 words per minute (wpm) for non-fiction and 260 wpm for fiction. The difference can be predicted by taking into account the length of the words, with longer words in non-fiction than in fiction. The estimates are lower than the numbers often cited in scientific and popular writings. The reasons for the overestimates are reviewed. …". 
   Have a look at this tool: "The Read Time" . It is a "Words To Time Converter" which allows you to "Accurately Estimate Talk Time For Presentations, Speeches and Voice-Over Scripts".  According to it, you probably spent about 5 minutes reading this. 

The Bonus: 

  This reminded me of "Speed Reading" and Evelyn Wood and "The Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamic Institute." Speed reading was almost a craze back in the early 1960's. Those who had not been diligent in their reading were attracted to classes which would teach you how to read thousands of words per minute and retain what was read. For more see: Evelyn Wood.