elision · readr
elision · readr

One word at a time, held still — so your eyes never have to move. Paste anything below to begin.

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Supports PDF, Word (.docx), and plain text files
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elision · readr

Most people read at 200 to 250 words per minute, and that number has barely moved in decades — even as the volume we're expected to get through has multiplied past anything earlier generations faced. The bottleneck was never the mind. It's the eyes.

Ordinary reading is a sequence of small mechanical movements. The eye jumps from word to word — a saccade — then sweeps back to the start of each new line to begin again. Each jump takes a fraction of a second. Each return resets your attention a little. Alone, they're imperceptible. Stacked across a page, a chapter, a lifetime, they're the quiet tax that makes reading feel heavier and slower than it should.

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation — RSVP — removes them. One word at a time, fixed at a single point, so the eyes never move at all. No jumping. No sweeping back. No re-reading a sentence because your focus slipped at the line break. What remains is the part worth keeping: the words, and your grasp of them.

There's a particular weight to reading now. The articles saved for a later that never arrives. The books opened with intent and left a third of the way through. The reports skimmed, half-understood, nodded along to. The world makes more worth reading than any one person can take in, and the stack only grows.

Elision is a word from linguistics: the removal of a gap. The small silence between words in speech, collapsed, so two separate things become one continuous flow. It's almost exactly what happens here. The gap between words isn't neutral — it's where your pace leaks away, where focus frays, where you look up and realise you've read the same line three times over. Close the gap and the words simply arrive. The text moves through you, rather than you labouring through it.

This was never about speed for its own sake. It's about getting some of that time back — the hours the friction was quietly taking, handed back to you.

So try it with something that matters. An article you've been meaning to reach. A chapter you keep restarting. Something you actually need to read.

Welcome to Elision Readr.

how to use
How to use Elision Readr
Loading text
Paste text directly into the text area, or switch to the URL tab to fetch an article from the web. Type or paste a URL and tap Fetch — the readable content is extracted automatically.
Playback
Tap the Play button or tap anywhere on the word display to start. Words appear one at a time at a fixed point. Adjust reading speed with the WPM slider at the bottom.
Controls
Sentence jumps back to the start of the current sentence. Para jumps back to the start of the current paragraph. View All opens the full text so you can browse and jump to any word. Start returns to the very beginning.
Swipe gestures
On the word display, swipe left to go back 10 words. Swipe right to restart the current sentence.
Keyboard shortcuts
Space or Enter — play/pause. ← Arrow — back 10 words (Shift+← restarts sentence). ↑ Arrow — restart paragraph. Home — restart from beginning. B — toggle Bionic Reading. V — open View All. + / − — increase or decrease font size.
View All
Opens the full text with the current word highlighted. Tap any word to jump directly to that position. Playback resumes from there if it was running.
Bionic Reading
Bolds the first portion of each word to give the eye an anchor point. Some readers find it improves focus and reduces regression. Toggle it on or off with the 𝗕 Bionic button.
Display mode
Use the toggle in the top-right corner to switch between dark and light mode. The dot position indicates the current mode — dot on the left is dark, dot on the right is light.
Need help?
If something isn't working as expected, send us a note.
Thanks — we'll be in touch.