If you can open it in a browser without logging in — an article, a blog, a link-shared doc — Wordema can read it. Paywalls and private logins stop at the door.
Wordema is a science-based reading app.1 It shows a book one word at a time, each word held at a single point on the screen, so your eyes stop hunting across the page. The library is free — thousands of the greatest books ever written.
Instead of scanning lines of text, you watch one word appear where your gaze already rests. This is called RSVP — rapid serial visual presentation. You set the pace by swiping up to go faster or down to go slower.
Rest your eyes on the one gold letter in the middle of each word — and keep them there. Don’t try to read left to right; just hold your gaze on that letter and let each word build around it. You’ll take the whole word in at a glance, almost peripherally. The trick is to stop “reading” and let the words come to you — once it clicks, it feels effortless.
When you read a normal page, your eyes don’t glide — they jump (saccades), stop (fixations), and sweep back to the next line, thousands of times a page.1 That movement is most of the effort, and it’s where you drift or lose your place. Holding each word in one spot removes the movement, so reading feels calmer and more focused.
Honestly, the science says take this slowly. A major review of reading research (Rayner et al., 2016)2 finds a real trade-off between speed and comprehension: because reading one word at a time doesn’t let you glance back to re-read, pushing the pace too hard lets misunderstandings slip through5. At a comfortable pace, comprehension holds as well as ordinary reading — it’s only “overclocking” that hurts. That’s exactly why Wordema keeps the default pace calm and checks what you understood. Read a new way, but let understanding — not a number — set your pace.
The most rigorous estimate — a 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies — puts the average adult’s silent reading at about 238 words per minute3 (a little faster for fiction, slower for dense material). With RSVP you can go beyond that, but there is no single right number: the best pace is the fastest one at which the story still lands — which is why Wordema shows you comprehension, not speed, as the gauge.
Start slow — Wordema’s default is deliberately calm so the story draws you in. As it begins to feel natural, usually after a few sessions, nudge the cadence up a little at a time. If your comprehension score dips, ease back. It is a progression, not a race.
RSVP keeps you from re-reading mid-sentence, so comprehension depends on a sensible pace. Wordema’s comprehension check asks a couple of questions drawn from the exact book you read, giving you an honest measure of whether your pace is sticking.
Yes. The library is built from the public domain — thousands of classics, free to read, across every genre.
Two libraries, really. The free classics: Dickens, Austen, the Brontë sisters, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Homer and Shakespeare, plus science fiction, mystery, adventure, poetry, philosophy, biography and the world’s sacred texts — a search across more than 78,000 free books. And your own: any text you paste, or any public web page you link (see below). If it’s made of words, you can read it in Wordema.
Yes. Tap “Read your own” — on the library screen, or when you first open the app — and paste in any text (an essay, a chapter, an email), or drop in a link to a public article or page. Wordema pulls out the words and reads them to you one at a time, just like a book. The rule is simple: if you can open it in a browser without logging in, Wordema can read it. Paywalls and private logins stop at the door.
Possibly, for some. Research on dyslexic readers found that showing just a few words per line — which reduces the visual crowding and the backward eye movements that make reading hard — improved both reading speed and comprehension4. Wordema takes that idea to its limit: one word at a time, at a fixed point. It also offers the Atkinson Hyperlegible typeface, designed for dyslexic and low-vision readers. Wordema is a reading tool, not a medical treatment, and it won’t suit everyone — but for many, a single focal point genuinely helps.
Yes — tap the settings cog at the top-right. You can switch between night and day, size the text up or down, set the tone (the feel of the pacing — Natural, Intimate, or Cinematic), and choose your font: classic serifs like Georgia and Times New Roman, cleaner Helvetica or Arial, or the dyslexia-friendly Hyperlegible face.
1. Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 372–422. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.372
2. Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E. J., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(1), 4–34. doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267
3. Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
4. Schneps, M. H., Thomson, J. M., Chen, C., Sonnert, G., & Pomplun, M. (2013). E-readers are more effective than paper for some with dyslexia. PLOS ONE, 8(9), e75634. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0075634
5. Acklin, D., & Papesh, M. H. (2017). Modern speed-reading apps do not foster reading comprehension. The American Journal of Psychology, 130(2), 183–199. doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.130.2.0183
Reading, the way it was always meant to feel.
Your eyes were never built to glide across a page. They jump, stop, and sweep back — thousands of tiny movements a page. That hunting is most of the effort, and it’s where you tire, drift, and lose your place.
This is RSVP — rapid serial visual presentation. Wordema holds every word at one fixed point, so your eyes stay still and the words come to you. Rest your gaze on the gold letter at each word’s center — the rest builds around it, and you take the whole word in at a glance.
English runs left to right. Arabic, right to left. Japanese, top to bottom. Every language sends the eye a different way — yet they all cross at one still point. That gold letter at the center is the epicenter of reading: the single place where every reader, in every tongue, has always met.
Calmer. More focused. And the pace is yours — swipe up or down, from an easy drift to a brisk flow, wherever feels right. You’re in control, and you’ll always see how much stayed with you.
Ordinary reading makes your eyes sprint across every line and jump back to the next — thousands of tiny movements (saccades and fixations) on every page. That effort is where readers tire, re-read, and lose their place.
RSVP — rapid serial visual presentation — shows one word at a time in a single fixed spot, so your eyes stop moving and the words come to you.
Wordema is built on that: less effort, more focus, and a pace you control. Not the way we were taught — a more natural, more efficient one.