Estimated Reading Time Widgets

Beware ye who enter, here be personal opinions.

I’ve never understood reading time estimation widgets. Why did these get so popular? Is it because they’re easy? I mean, you can grab one off npm no problem.

Baldur suggests a theory in his piece about estimated reading times:

At some point a programmer read in a study that the average person read 233 words per minute and decided that this would be a great way to estimate reading time for everybody on the fucking planet.

The “reading time” for an article always felt so personal to me. As Baldur also points out, it can be affected by so many variables, such as:

• Word count or length
• Writing style
• Design (formatting, typeface, etc.)
• Individual physical factors
• Vocabulary
• Medium

Because I’ve always seen reading time as such an incredibly personal thing, I’ve never once paid any heed to these widgets. In fact, I’ve been slightly perturbed a service would presume to know how quickly I could read an article.

That’s to say nothing of the fact that if I come to a text to understand it (or merely enjoy it for that matter), speed is the very last thing on my mind.

I’ve always viewed any service that sticks a “reading time” widget on its articles as the literary equivalent of fast-food: you’re not here for quality, but for expediency.

Personally, I think they devalue a text more than they add to it.

But hey, I’ll grant that’s just like, my opinion, man.