When Reading Went Silent

Reading’s Noisy Origins

While the written connection has been astir for millennia, the mode humans engaged with it has transformed successful the past fewer centuries. Thousands of years aft penning was invented, precise fewer radical were literate. By necessity, speechmaking was a communal, societal activity. Those capable to decipher the markings, archetypal connected stone, past scroll, would work retired large to the group. In A History of Reading, writer Alberto Manguel describes how, from 500 BC to the Middle Ages, writers assumed that substance would beryllium heard, alternatively than simply seen. Words were written arsenic 1 continuous drawstring of text, without spaces oregon punctuation. Given that everyone was speechmaking aloud, Manguel wondered:

“If speechmaking retired large was the norm from the beginnings of the written word, what was it similar to work successful the large past libraries? The Assyrian student consulting 1 of the 30 1000 tablets successful the room of King Ashurbanipal successful the seventh period BC, the unfurlers of scrolls astatine the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum, Augustine himself looking for a definite substance successful the libraries of Carthage and Rome, indispensable person worked successful the midst of a rumbling din.”

Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

In her fascinating  video “How dilatory speechmaking tin alteration your brain,” Dami Lee cites the 4th period substance Confessions for clues that speechmaking silently was inactive highly unusual. St. Augustine writes of a chap reader:

“But erstwhile Ambrose utilized to read, his eyes were drawn done the pages, portion his bosom searched for its meaning; however, his dependable and lingua were quiet. Often erstwhile we were present—for anyone could attack him and it was not his wont that visitors beryllium announced to him—we saw him speechmaking successful this fashion, silently and ne'er otherwise.”

St. Augustine’s Confessions

That St. Augustine, nary slouch successful the speechmaking section himself, feels the request to telephone retired Ambrose’s soundless speechmaking suggests it was antithetic — singular adjacent — that the antheral did not dependable his words. 

Reading Quiets Down

Dami Lee explains that the invention of punctuation successful the 12th period was a crippled changer. Spaces betwixt words, periods, and capitalization, made it easier to work and process substance silently.

With the invention of the printing press, much radical had entree to books, and literacy rose. More radical could entree books, and the words they contained, without having to perceive to substance work aloud. Still, until the 17th century, societal speechmaking was the norm. A Quartz article by Thu-Huong Ha quotes historiographer Robert Darnton: “For the communal radical successful aboriginal modern Europe, speechmaking was a societal activity. It took spot successful workshops, barns, and taverns. It was astir ever oral but not needfully edifying.” It was hard to dive heavy into a substance portion radical were shouting implicit their pints. The immersive, solitary acquisition of speechmaking was inactive inaccessible for astir people.

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The Quiet Reader: A Dangerous Proposition 

By the 18th and 19th centuries, the signifier of soundless speechmaking became widespread. We whitethorn not deliberation of speechmaking silently  arsenic a subversive act, but galore historians admit it arsenic the cardinal to rising individualism and backstage thought. Now, wrong the privateness of the printed page, soundless speechmaking allowed radical to prosecute with written texts connected their ain terms, without the power of an oral interpretation. Ha notes that this backstage enactment alarmed some: “Silent speechmaking by the precocious 19th period was truthful fashionable that radical disquieted that women successful particular, reading unsocial successful bed, were prone to sexy, unsafe thoughts.”

Reading silently made books much introspective by providing a backstage dialog betwixt writer and scholar that encouraged autarkic thought and questioned societal norms. Thanks to expanding literacy, substance drew much readers into caller worlds that began connected the leafage and took basal successful the imagination. As modern past attests, this benignant of soundless speechmaking has successful information fueled galore revolutionaries, visionaries, and changemakers who aboriginal tested their bookish ideas successful societal spaces. 

The Enduring Benefits of Reading Aloud

While speechmaking silently is the norm today, determination are inactive benefits to speechmaking aloud similar our ancestors did. According to the BBC, researchers recovered radical consistently retrieve words and texts amended if they work them aloud than if they work them silently. When speechmaking aloud, the encephalon is forced to process the substance successful a antithetic way, arsenic it is processing some the ocular and auditory information, which tin assistance to amended knowing and retention. These patterns whitethorn stem from the mode humanity learned to interact with the written connection archetypal arsenic listeners.