Response to "A History of Reading" by Alberto Manguel (1996)

The idea of an endless cycle came to mind while reading Alberto Manguel’s chapter “The Silent Readers”, both actions of reading orally and writing words continuously were dependent on each other. “Because books were mainly read out loud, the letters that composed them did not need to be separated into phonetic unities, but were strung together in continuous sentences” (47). In cycles, one component tends to perpetuate the other and vice versa and at times seems unbreakable. This cycle, however, was broken. Many small changes added up to major changes in reading and writing as in Christian monks dividing text into lines in order to help readers or Irish scribes dividing sentences into parts of speech. As gradually as these changes occurred so did the way readers interacted with the text; it put a spotlight on the action of reading.

Before reading this chapter, it was hard to understand why that system of reading and writing continued for as long as it did. I realized it remained for so long because it was part of their socially and culturally accepted practices. The methods readers use are the ones society consider the norm and some of the reading and writing practices we use now might not be acceptable in the future. (An example of a current shift in reading practices is among those who prefer reading old fashioned books rather than books on e-readers.) Silent reading having become the norm changed how society viewed the practice of reading, “But with silent reading the reader was at last able to establish an unrestricted relationship with the book and the words” (50). Instead of the reader bringing the words to life when reading orally, the read was brought to life by the words when reading in silence. Because it was an internal process not available for the world to hear, silent reading profoundly changed now the content in the text was individually interpreted.

Withtheknowledgewehavenowofindividualwordsisitieasiertoreadwithoutanyseparations

Did you read this sentence out loud or silently? It was hard to even write this sentence because not only did I automatically hit the space bar but even when trying to correct the sentence I found it difficult to tell the words apart, especially without any punctuation. And I wrote the sentence! My handwritten version of this continuous sentence was less comprehensible than the typed form.