The physical act of reading with your eyes

How and where do your eyes fixate on the page? Between lines? On certain words? The first word of a line, the last? How does the length of lines factor in?

I found myself suddenly becoming very self-aware of this after thinking about it a bit and found out that usually when going through typical text my sight fixates somewhere between the line I'm currently reading and the next that's coming up. I pick up an average of 3-4 words per "jump" to the right. Reading on my e-reader I pretty much look at the beginning of the line, the middle, the end and then jump to the next line and repeat. Paper books with larger pages and longer lines require more jumps per line and they're sometimes slower to read than on a e-reader.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    one letter at a time

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Do you also point at the letters with a ruler?

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This bothers me very much. I was always a slow reader because I have to read out loud every word in my inner monologue. But whenever I try speedreading I catch myself not retaining any of the information. Back in school I was always among the last to finish reading a text, but at least I perfectly remembered everything I read. How do I read faster without missing any of the content?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Unironically try tracing the line you're reading with a finger at a constant pace with no pauses and read along. You can start slow and then increment the speed little by little. I guess the biggest thing while doing this is not to go so fast that it requires you to regularly jump back (regress) to comprehend what you're reading. But fast enough that you can't "speak out" the words. Try to process whole groups of words at once instead of every single one because your brain is very good at processing stuff in chunks like that if you just let it.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I tried that but then i barely see line i am reading, cuz its obscured by my finger

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          One pretty primitive beginner hack is using your finger to point at every other word and allow yourself to focus only on those words so you must pick everything in between with your peripheral vision or just by quickly glancing over the words when changing your focus. Also like some other anon said you need to learn how to jump over words while still letting your brain process them. Short words are easy, but after a while your brain will start to recognise even long and complicated words in a mere fraction of a second without ever focusing your eyesight on them. It just takes many many hours of practice. That's how reading is really.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        One pretty primitive beginner hack is using your finger to point at every other word and allow yourself to focus only on those words so you must pick everything in between with your peripheral vision or just by quickly glancing over the words when changing your focus. Also like some other anon said you need to learn how to jump over words while still letting your brain process them. Short words are easy, but after a while your brain will start to recognise even long and complicated words in a mere fraction of a second without ever focusing your eyesight on them. It just takes many many hours of practice. That's how reading is really.

        I want to learn more about this.
        I'm not OP but I notice when I'm reading non-fiction that I sometimes manage to enter a flow state that allow me to read and then recall information from a lot of pages in a short time. I've reasonably ruled out other factors and noticed that when I'm not in that flow state it's like my eyes just can't move along the text quickly enough and if I try to do it consciously it shifts my attention from the text to thinking about what my eyes are doing and how quickly I'm reading. I tried the finger trick but at the point I stop hearing my inner voice I'm already going too quickly to catch anything, let alone understand it.
        An aside, I noticed it's easier to get into that flow state if I have a concrete question that I need answered, but it's really difficult to constantly generate concrete questions when I'm reading 700 pages of history I don't know yet, so I don't know what question would even be pertinent to ask.
        Back to the eye thing, it bothers me that I either think about the act of reading or I slip into reading pages too slowly retrace all the time. It's like my brain refuses to hold a chunk of words together (that way their meaning is immediately obvious) and instead tries to extract it word by word - either that or my eyes just somehow don't move along the text properly so that my brain can "load" a bunch of words at the same time. When I enter that flow state these problems vanish so I know I'm capable of it, it's just a matter of figuring out how to replicate it as often as possible.
        Any help would be appreciated, anons

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You need to learn to identify key words and phrases and not necessarily “ignore” filler words like the, and, of, etc, but feel them out and whisk by them.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I'll just read brief summaries instead, thanks.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Imo there's a gradient between word by word and skimming. As we read we move up and down the scale depending on our interest, energy level, blood sugar etc etc.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I look at mostly the first few letters of the word, maybe the first syllable and maybe the last two letters the rest my brain literally fills.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    > How and where do your eyes fixate on the page?
    On the page.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      this

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      this

      Be more specific.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    one speed reading technique is to trace a finger down the centre of a page and to focus on the point just above the finger. the words to the right and left are naturally taken in as you move down the page.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    speed reading is pretty much storing word string in your short term memory and hoping the context of the pre and proceeding word strings will shove them into a synthesized product of longterm memory.
    if your semantic seiotic circut isnt couched in your reptilian brain speed reading will be difficult becuase your brain is at the same time reading the words on the page and attaching meaning to the words.
    if you want to practise start speed reading childrens books or books that are 3 or 4 grades behind you.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I wouldn't say 'skipping' over words is really speed reading. You're still picking up everything. People will do this naturally when they get better at reading and I don't think it can be classified as speed reading. At least in my mind speed reading is something people do when they're intentionally not trying to pick up everything and retention is not important. Speed reading is a compromise between retention and speed.

      Most readers, atleast the good ones, don't look at every word on the page unless each word requires special attention, such as when reading poetry for example.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I don't think I even considered the mechanics of reading since, I dunno, pre-school maybe. I just look at the words and meaning begins to leap into my brain. My only job is to keep my inner gaze concentrated on that meaning and not wander off into intrusive thoughts. I always assumed thats what everyone does.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I guess lit doesn't actually read much.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You know that there's literally hundreds of scientific experiments that have been conducted on this, right? It's an entry level psycholinguistics topic.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I'm more interested in peoples' personal habits and and experiences.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        People usually have no idea how they actually read since almost every eye movement is too quick and involuntary to get noticed if not done with an eye tracking camera.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >trusting people's opinions
        >on a Tibetan basketweaving forum
        >not relying on peer reviewed facts/studies
        >believing opinions are valuable
        >he hasn't realized most people confabulate or make shit up unknowingly
        >trusts people to report their introspection accurately

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I read like a pinball machine. At this point, I read just about everything out of order, and I have to read it at least three times. Not fun.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      What exactly causes this? Because I do the same quite often, not sure if it's a sluggish bad habit or just flat out moronation

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Eh, it might be both or neither. I suffer from anxiety, adhd and I have a tick disorder in my eyes (not while reading) but I suspect that is tiring my eye muscles out or something. Honestly, I think it's the anxiety thing. I can't watch tv shows or movies anymore either.

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