Learn to read faster.

Five pages on how one-word-at-a-time reading works, what the research supports, and how to get a readable text out of a file that was never meant to be read this way. No hype: where the method stops helping, we say so.

• What is RSVP reading?

  RSVP shows one word at a time in a fixed spot, so your eyes stop jumping. Where the method comes from, what it does to reading speed, and where it stops helping.

• How to speed read a PDF

  PDFs carry running headers, page numbers, footnotes and two-column layouts that ruin one-word-at-a-time reading. What to strip, what to keep, and how to read a long PDF chapter by chapter.

• Reading an EPUB one word at a time

  An EPUB is a zip of HTML with a table of contents, which makes it the cleanest thing you can speed read. How to open one in the browser, and why the file never leaves your device.

• Does speed reading work?

  The honest version: what reading research says about regressions, subvocalisation and the comprehension ceiling — and which parts of the speed-reading pitch do not survive it.

• Spritz, Spreeder and the alternatives

  What Spritz, Spreeder and the other RSVP readers do well, where each one stops, and what to look for in a free browser reader that opens PDFs and EPUBs.

• Reading speed test

  Read one passage, answer three questions, and find out how fast you actually read — and at what pace it is worth trying RSVP.