>There is a second technique, which I did not master but did make the attempt. This technique has you read vertically – line by line. Yes vertically and not horizontal. This is not a joke – and is the technique used by John F. Kennedy and others, to read about 10,000 words a minute. You begin by using a book designed for this purpose. There are narrow columns of words which you train your eyes to scan vertically. You begin with one word columns and progress until you can scan the width of an entire page. As I said I was not able to master this technique. I got to about five words and that was the maximum. For my purposes reading 1200 words a minute was sufficient.
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>I estimate I have read over 17,000 in my lifetime, and about 99% were non fiction. I am not counting any books required by school or the six years of college I enjoyed. Reading a great deal has given me the opinion that truth exists in the mind of the individual and may not exist in exactly the same form anywhere else.
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>Hope this has given you some concepts on how to increase your reading speed. It is not really necessary to spend money on a class or even a book. Try the library or the suggestion above about “not breaking the eye”.
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>Run Spot run. Run Dick run. Run Jane run. Dick and Jane ran after Spot.
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>Tom

Hi Tom,
I know the feeling. I was raised RC also. I went to the Evelyn Woods Reading Dynamics to see if it was worthwhile. While we were testing, the instructor stopped me because I was just whipping my finger across the page. My reading and comprehension came in at 900 wpm and 95%. I think that probably had to do with the fact I was reading everything I could lay my hands on since I was very young.

I didn't quite make the category that you're in, which is 'natural rapid reader'. You need 1K wpm for that.

Anyway, the Evelyn Woods course requires two hours of reading a night if anyone is interested in technique. If you've got two hours a night to devote to reading, you're going to get faster whether you're in a course or not. They didn't recommend I take the course, but they were interested in what the improvement would be if I did. I wasn't going to spend what little money I had.

Just my 2 cents worth.
Pete