In the last post we talked about changing the margins of an online document to make it easier for you to learn how to group words, or “clump” them, so that your eye takes in words in multiples, rather than one at a time. Today we’ll talk about how you can use that same technique with paper documents, but in a slightly different way. Rather than focusing on improving your ability to take in multiple words at the same time by reducing the number of words on the line, this margin-adjusting exercise helps you expand your peripheral vision, which will allow your eyes to absorb larger groups of words even on normal-length lines of text. In order to do this exercise, you’ll need a paper document you can draw lines on (not a library book, obviously!). Find a document where there’s only one column of text on the page, not a magazine or newspaper where the text is already divided into narrow columns.

Expanding the range of your vision will require both concentration and relaxation. To help you concentrate on the exercise, you’ll need to indent the margins of the text to provide guides for your eyes. Draw a straight line about 1/4 to 1/2 inch in from each outside margin running from the top of the page to the bottom, on both sides. As you read, let that be the limit of where your eye stops left and right, rather than moving your eyes from the very beginning to the very end of the text on each line.

Here’s where the relaxation comes in: you’ll need to trust that your peripheral vision will pick up the words that are to the outside left and right of those penciled-in margins. After you read a page of text, stop and think about what you read and go over it in your mind. To check that you didn’t miss anything, go back and read the page while ignoring the margins you drew. We’ll bet that you’ll soon realize that even if your eyes weren’t focused on the words on the edges of the page, your brain picked them up anyway, or was able to fill in the meaning if the missed words were unimportant ones.

As your peripheral vision gets better, bring in the lines by 1/2 to 1/4 inch at a time, until your comprehension review shows that you’ve started to reach the limit of your peripheral vision. Keep practicing, and you’ll be confident that you’re able to get the most out of every document with the least amount of eye movements, a key element in speed reading technique.