How to stop subvocalising
The inner voice you hear while reading is called subvocalisation, and almost every speed-reading course tells you to kill it. That advice is wrong in a specific and fixable way.
What it is
Most people hear something like a voice as they read — not quite speech, but the words going past in sound as well as sight. It is not a bad habit picked up at school. It is part of how skilled reading works: the sound of a word is one of the routes to its meaning, and the route stays active even in very fast readers.
Why "eliminate it" is bad advice
The usual argument is arithmetic: you can only speak at about 150 words per minute, so if you are saying words in your head you are capped at speaking speed. The arithmetic is wrong, because inner speech is not the same as speech. It is partial and compressed, and it runs comfortably faster than anyone can talk — people read silently at well over 200 words a minute while still subvocalising.
Attempts to suppress it properly, rather than just speed it up, tend to cost comprehension. The effect is worst exactly where you would least want it: on difficult material, where holding a sentence together is doing real work. Reviews of the reading research treat eliminating inner speech as one of the claims speed-reading marketing cannot support.
What to do instead
- Read slightly faster than you could say it. Push a little past comfortable speaking pace and the inner voice naturally thins out into something lighter — present, but no longer pronouncing every syllable. This is the whole technique, and it is the only part of the usual advice that survives.
- Use a pacer. Something that moves at a set rate stops you dropping back to speaking speed without noticing. A finger on paper works; an RSVP reader does it precisely, because each word replaces the last whether you are ready or not.
- Occupy the voice, briefly. Humming or counting quietly while reading does suppress subvocalisation, and is worth trying once purely to feel the difference. Do not adopt it as a method: comprehension drops, which is the point of the exercise.
- Let it come back when the text gets hard. On a complex sentence, hearing it is helping you. Slowing down there is not a failure of technique.
How much faster will this make you?
Modestly. Someone reading at 240 words per minute who stops letting their inner voice pace them can usually settle comfortably in the 300–400 range on ordinary material. That is a worthwhile gain and it is permanent. It is not the jump to 1,000 words per minute the courses promise, and no technique delivers that without turning reading into skimming.
Questions people ask
Is subvocalising bad?
No. It is a normal part of reading and one of the routes from a written word to its meaning. Suppressing it entirely tends to reduce comprehension, especially on difficult text.
Can you read without subvocalising?
You can reduce it, and techniques like humming while reading suppress it measurably — but comprehension falls when you do. The practical goal is to stop it setting your pace, not to remove it.
Does subvocalising slow you down?
Only if it is pacing you at speaking speed. Inner speech itself runs faster than talking, which is why people read silently at more than 200 words per minute while still hearing the words.
What is the fastest way to reduce subvocalisation?
Read slightly faster than you could comfortably say the words aloud, using a pacer so you do not drift back. An RSVP reader enforces this automatically.