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If I have a daily routine of reading:

  • x pages of a book, or x paragraphs, or x sentences, etc.
  • Where the x object may change according to the book type (for example, if I read a poetry book, I'll read x poems; or if I read a foreign language book, I'll read x sentences)

What word should I use to generally describe the x items?

I'd like to use that word with counting, for example:

Every day at 20:00, I read my daily 5 <items>

another example:

I was tired and only read 2 out of my 7 <items> today, so tomorrow I'll read 12 <items>

I know I can just replace <items> with the objects I'm reading (pages/paragraphs/sentences), but I wonder if there's a general word for them?

Alternatives I have in mind:

  1. segments
  2. blocks
  3. spreads

In my native language, I'd actually use 2 words that would translate to "reading sections", or "reading segments". Intuitively, that doesn't sound like a good English word choice.

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  • Hey, Jude. Do have a word for this in your native language. It seems to be unlikely that a specific word exists for so many diverse things (or rather words that do exist are more general like "thing") If there is no word in you native language, then it's probable that no word exists in English either.
    – James K
    Apr 2, 2021 at 17:12
  • @JamesK, in my native language, I'd actually use 2 words that would translate to "reading sections", or "reading segments". Intuitively, that doesn't sound like a good English words choice, but as I'm not a native English speaker, I'm not sure.
    – HeyJude
    Apr 3, 2021 at 17:03
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    I think it is the same in English, there is no special word so you use "segment" which has a much more general meaning, qualified by "reading". It's not really idiomatic, but reading segment works well enough.
    – James K
    Apr 3, 2021 at 17:25

2 Answers 2

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There isn't really a specific word in English. But you can use something like "reading segment". It's not particularly idiomatic, so you'd probably need to define the term:

I try to read five segments each evening, for example five poems, or five paragraphs from an English novel. But last night I was tired, and only completed two reading segments. So tonight I'll aim for twelve.

Once defined you can use the term, but in most cases using a specific word, like "poem" would be better.

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You can use "assignment", where each unit of reading is an assignment. So you can say, " every day at 20:00, I read my daily 5 reading assignments", or "I do my 5 daily reading assignments".

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  • Clever answer, but it does imply that the reading is "assigned", and 1 assignment may be to read 5 sentences, so not ambiguous.
    – James K
    Apr 3, 2021 at 7:41

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