For many people today, reading is no longer relaxation. To keep up their work they must read letters, reports, trade publications, interoffice communications, not to mention newspapers and magazines: a never-ending flood of words. In 1 a job or advancing in one, the ability to read and comprehend 2 can mean the difference between success and failure. Yet the unfortunate fact is that most of us are 3 readers. Most of us develop poor reading 4 at an early age, and never get over them. The main deficiency 5 in the actual stuff of language itself-words. Taken individually, words have 6 meaning until they are strung together into phrased, sentences and paragraphs. 7 , however, the untrained reader does not read groups of words. He laboriously reads one word at a time, often regressing to 8 words or passages. Regression, the tendency to look back over 9 you have just read, is a common bad habit in reading. Another habit which 10 down the speed of reading is vocalization—sounding each word either orally or mentally as 11 reads.