I am by nature a slow reader. At least, that is the impression I get when I hear of how quickly others read and how much they read in a night, etc. As a result, years ago, I tried a few techniques to speed up. I have pretty much given up on the idea—I enjoy reading and have good retention, so why hurry it?—but some general ideas have stuck with me.

One is skim reading. I use that for newspapers, the Internet, books I am not interested in or to locate parts I am interested in. I just let my eyes flow over the text and allow words and ideas to jump out at me and allow my brain to form a general idea. It works. A technique that didn't work for me, because it was sort of like a machine reading, was to kind of strobe the eyes onto the first, then the middle and finally the last third of a line of text. Instead of reading each word, one takes in chunks of words. Well, I guess I could practise that some, but it seems rather artificial. It might work for textbooks, but I don't see it being a method of choice for pleasure. A technique I developed myself through literature study at university is to read the first and last sentence of each paragraph, since good writers will typically state the main idea of a paragraph in the first line, then introduce details one might not need, and sum up in the last sentence with the gist of the paragraph and lead into the following paragraph. This is pretty decent, I find, for getting facts quickly.

What techniques do you use to read brochures, articles or books quickly?