<P> Words per minute is a common metric for assessing reading speed and is often used in the context of remedial skills evaluation, as well as in the context of speed reading, where it is a controversial measure of reading performance . </P> <P> A word in this context is the same as in the context of speech . </P> <P> Research done in 2012 measured the speed at which subjects read a text aloud, and found the average speed across 17 different languages to be 184 ± 29 WPM or 863 ± 234 CPM . However, for the languages that use the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets, the number of WPM varied, as low as 161 ± 18 for Finnish and as high as 228 ± 30 for English . The reason for this is different word structures in each language (longer words in such languages as Finnish and shorter words in English). However, the number of characters per minute tends to be around 1000 for all the tested languages . For the tested Asian languages that use particular writing systems (Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese) these numbers are lower . </P> <P> Scientific studies have demonstrated that reading--defined here as capturing and decoding all the words on every page--faster than 900 wpm is not feasible given the limits set by the anatomy of the eye . </P>

Average number of words read in a minute