Notes

When you start out to investigate the various senses of a word, it is usually wise to
begin with a dictionary and your own knowledge of common usage. If you looked up
"read" in the large Oxford Dictionary, you would find, first, that the same four letters
constituted an obsolete noun referring to the fourth stomach of a ruminant, and the
commonly used verb which refers to a mental activity involving words or symbols of
some sort. You would know at once that we need not bother with the obsolete noun
except, perhaps, to note that reading has something to do with rumination. You would
discover next that the verb has twenty-one more or less closely related meanings, more
or less common.
One uncommon meaning of "to read" is to think or suppose. This meaning passes into
the more usual one of conjecturing or predicting, as when we speak of reading the stars,
one's prm, or one's future. That leads eventually to the meaning of the word in which it
refers to perusing books or other written documents. There are many other meanings,
such as verbal utterance ( when an actress reads her lines for the director); such as
detecting what is not perceptible from what is (when we asy we can read a person's character in his face); such as instruction, academic or personal (when we have someone
read us a lecture).
The slight variations in usage seem endless; a singer reads music; a scientist reads
nature; an engineer reads his instruments; a printer reads proof; we read between the
lines; we read something into situation, or someone out of the party.
We can simplify matters by noting what is common to many of these senses; namely,
that mental activity is involved and that, in one way or another, symbols are being
interpreted. That imposes a first limitation on our use of the word. We are not concerned
with a part of the intestinal tract, nor are we concerned with enunciation, with speaking
something out loud. A second limitation is need, because we shall not consider—except
for some points of comparison—the interpretation, clairvoyant or otherwise, of natural
signs such as stars hands, or faces. We shall limit ourselves to one kind of readable
symbol, the kind which men invent for the purposes of communication—the words of
human language. This eliminates the reading of other artificial signs such as the pointers
on dials of physical apparatus, thermometers, gauges, speedometers, and so forth.
Henceforth, then, you must read the word "reading," as it occurs in this text, to refer to
the process of interpreting or understanding what presents itself to the senses in the form
of words or other sensible marks. This is not arbitrary legislation about what the word
"reading" means. It is simply a matter of defining our problem, which reading the in the
sense of receiving communication.
Unfortunately, that is not simple do do, as you would realize at once if someone asked:
"What about listening? Isn't that receiving communication, too?" I shall subsquently
discuss the relation of reading and listening, for the rules of good reading are for the
most part the rules of good listening, though perhaps harder to apply in the latter case.
Suffice it for the present to distinguish reading from listening by restricting the
communication being received to what is written and printed rather than spoken.
I shall try to use the word "reading" in the limited and special sense noted. But I know
that I will not succeed without exception. It will be impossible to avoid using the word
in some of its other senses. Sometimes I sha;; be thoughtful enough to mention
explicitly that I am shifting the meaning. Other times I may suppose that the context is
sufficient warning to you. Infrequently ( I hope ) I may shift the meaning without being
aware of it myself.
Be stout, gentle reader, for you are just beginning. What has gone before is just
preliminary to finding out the even narrower sense in which the word "reading" will be
used. We must now face the problem which the first chapter indicated. We must
distinguish between the sense in which you can read this book, for instance, and are
now doing so, and the sense in which you may learn from it to read better or diferently
than you now can.
Notice that I said "better" or "differently." The one word points to diffrence in degrees
of ability, the other to a distinction in kinds. I suppose we shall find that the better
reader can also do a different kind of reading. The poorer can probably do only one
kind—the simplest kind. Let us first examine the range of ability in reading to
determine what we mean by "better" and "poorer."