This article focuses on reading time as a readability metric. In everyday life, people are limited not only by the complexity of the text but the time they can spend on reading. For an accurate calculation of reading time, it is necessary to know the silent reading speed of adults. However, this topic has been insufficiently studied and is characterized by high variability. The time spent on reading is, in fact, a part of the Federal Law on Advertising and the readability calculations are now part of a linguist’s everyday work. We selected four texts and asked the respondents to read them silently for a minute and then indicate where they stopped. According to the study’s results, we calculated the average silent reading speed for simple, non-specialized text based on data from 143 participants – it is 275 words per minute (WPM) (standard deviation: 86). It was found that complex, specialized texts were read slower by a factor of 0.74 (standard deviation 0.18) - approximately 203 words per minute (standard deviation 50). The reading speed depends on many factors with the greatest influence coming from the level of education and constant reading of subject-specific literature. Candidates of Science, Doctors of Science read the fastest, while those with only a general secondary education read the slowest. It was found that lawyers read both specialized and simple texts faster than others, and people with medical backgrounds read legal texts significantly slower.
The contact details of authors:
Iakovleva, Iaroslavna Aleksandrovna – Master in Linguistics, Major in Computer and Applied Linguistics, Bank of Russia Consultant, Moscow, Russia, https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4718-4364, jaroslawna.j@yandex.ru
