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Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

beelinereader.com

201–210 of 273 posts

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#201
I think it's a great idea. Every technical book should start using it immediately. There's nothing more depressing than cracking opening a computer book that 500 pages of block typing. I've never known how you guys get through some of those phone books?

It might be great for some fiction?

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#203
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like spreeder: http://www.spreeder.com/ Set the chunk size to three for best effect. Just gradually increase it each time, and also try using it occasionally with the speed far too fast. You'll get used to subvocalizing less, and reading multiple words at once. Of course, for complex texts like the ones you read, it's natural to read much slower. I read 600 WPM for most internet articles, but I'm sure I wouldn't re…

maybe it's just me but I feel like I have a stutter thought when I read using that. It's just doesnt feel right; I think books/articles reading will be less enjoyable if I'd have to use it.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#204

Hmmmm... I'm sure it'll need a linked scientific study to actually back up the claim. (And every speed-reading product I've seen has usually had a decrease in comprehension rate...) It's a clever idea, but anecdotally, from my experience, I'm finding it slows down my reading -- I'm having a hard time processing the blurbs because I don't read "linearly" -- I scan content to find the relevant parts, and the color chan…

I don't think they're claiming this as a "speed reading" product in the traditional sense. They're saying it increases reading speed when reading the way most people do, which is line by line. It's certainly not likely to be useful for the kind of reading where you need to scan. But for fiction and other writing that is meant to be read linearly, the claims they're making seem plausible. What it doesn't help with is…

That's a good idea. I have the same problem with fiction, for some reason--except for Nabokov. His books are written so well, each line just flows on to the next.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#205
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I normally read around 600 to 1000 wpm (depending on how dense or vapid it is). This speeds up my reading wayyyyy past that. 1500 wpm? And I was barely trying. It does look super fucking ugly, but it totally works for me. They need to bring in an army of designers and make software geared towards legal assistants / lawyers because they need this desperately.

What techniques do you use? I read at around 600wpm, and increasing it by 50-100% seems pretty daunting.

I trained a bit speed reading when I was in higschool from some book that was translated from Russian (sorry, no idea what was the book) the main idea there was to: 1) not saying words with inner voice 2) not reading letter by letter (seeing whole word at once) 3) reading by connected words not only word by word 4) there was eye training exercise, the idea was that you had to train vision a bit to be able to read more text with less eye movement, i.e. to read word by word you have to be able to see whole word at once (so your brain recognizes word with 1 lookup, not letter-by-letter lookup) whether this helped - I don’t now but that spreeder says that I can read more than 1500 wpm on casual texts (when there is a lot of material I want to realy comprehend, ofcourse it is slower even by factor of 3)

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#207

Wow, It feels like the first time I tried glasses. It completely removes any chances of me missing a line. I have a low dyslexia and this just works. Thank you !!

I prefer it to the dyslexic font, it feels less disruptive. It should come bundled with every os :)

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#208

I read a lot and I read really fast too. So line skipping is a problem, especially on longer lines. This thing combines the old Readability bookmarklet with the gradient. I saw the improvement right away, following the line is much easier now! tl;dr - this is awesome!

It's ironic, you double spaced your sentences. Maybe, that's the answer; More authors should double space?
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