Spritz: Join the reading revolution!

[skm]

Spritz: Reading revolution!

I first heard about this technology a couple years ago when a company called Spritz® claimed it can make you read more than twice as fast as a normal person using its clever word displaying technology. This technology consists of showing individual words in quick successions and aligning them accordingly to minimize eye movement. It claimed not only to make you read at speeds of up to 700 words per minute (in perspective the average is 220 words per minute according to Spritz®) but also to make reading more comfortable. All of this without any training!
At the time, this technology was in very early stages but I was certain it was going to get bigger, think about it: we have been reading the same way for thousands of years and with the ubiquity of computers, how come there has never been an improvement? Why must text be presented the same way on a computer and on a book? The answer: it doesn’t have to be this way.

How does it work and how can it improve my reading?

When reading a book, text is presented as a long chain of words, just how you would write it: this traditional way of displaying text is optimized for space saving rather than reading comfort and efficiency. Spritz takes a different approach: words appear on a single line, one by one and in quick successions. From Spritz’s research the human brain recognizes words as shapes, and when you read your eyes fixate at one point of each word before processing its meaning: this point is called the ORP (Optimal Recognition Position). Thus, the key to increasing speed and guaranteeing comprehension is by clever aligning of these aforementioned ORPs, here’s what Spritz® says about it:

“…your eyes naturally will look for the ORP to process the word and understand its meaning. This requisite eye movement creates a “saccade”, a physical eye movement caused by your eyes taking a split second to find the proper ORP for a word. Every saccade has a penalty in both time and comprehension, especially when you start to speed up reading.”

To summarize: each new word must be displayed with its ORP directly aligned with the previous one. Thus, your eyes will never have to move, eliminating this “saccade” mentioned earlier. Here’s a visual representation (curtesy of Spritz®):

And that’s why this reading method is so intuitive: what it comes down to is eliminating the action of moving your eyes left to right because the computer does it for you!

“Spritzing should never feel uncomfortable or forced; otherwise, you’re doing it wrong.”

Of course, the science is much more complex, but I can only go so deep in one article…

You convinced me! How do I get into it?

There are various tools already at your disposal to utilize this novel way of reading, from free apps on IOS, Android and Windows Phones all the way to Websites and E-Readers. In my opinion, the main focus for most users will be the Sprtizlet bookmarklet: it’s a piece of software you use in conjunction with your browser to interact with webpages. This tool lets you use Spritz on any piece of text you want! (be mindful that some websites block the use of bookmarklets though)

Here's what it looks like:

Notice how you read at ~600wpm without hassle!

For users like me who pale when confronted to internet pages full of text this is a lifesaver!
Make sure to upvote this post and follow me for future content! Happy Spritzing!

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Learn more on Spritz's® website: http://spritzinc.com/

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