What is the average reading speed in words per minute?

Question

I have heard about different statistics about the average reading speeds of English among English speakers ... but I don't find any of them particularly reliable as their is wide variety. Can somebody point to a reliable source for such statistics?

Answer 1

The effective reading speeds for the slower group ranged f rom 33 words per minute (wpm) to 123 wpm on the long-passage test and from 83 wpm to 116 wpm for the paragraphs. The fast group speeds ranged from 180 wpm to 454 wpm on the long passage and from 146 wpm to 282 wpm on the paragraphs.

Source: Processing determinants of reading speed

BTW, The fastest that you can read using conventional reading is about 300 wpm.

Answer 2

The reason there is wide variety is down to how you ascertain averages. Some groups may be able to read a page of a novel in 10 seconds, others may be minutes on the same thing. I couldn't find any indication of a wide scale study, so what you might need to do is look at all the smaller ones you can find while googling, and extrapolate - make an average from them.

Having said that, I'm not certain this question is on-topic anyway.