“Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading. Any questions? No. The art of reading on any level above the elementary consists in the habit of asking the right questions in the right order. There are four main questions you must ask about any book.* WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE? You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into its essential subordinate themes or topics. WHAT IS BEING SAID IN DETAIL, AND HOW? You must try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author’s particular message. Is THE BOOK TRUE, IN WHOLE OR PART? You cannot answer this question until you have answered the first two. You have to know what is being said before you can decide whether it is true or not. When you understand a book, however, you are obligated, if you are reading seriously, to make up your own mind. Knowing the author’s mind is not enough. WHAT OF IT? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important to you to know them? And if the book has not only informed you, but also enlightened you, it is necessary to seek further enlightenment by asking what else follows, what is further implied or suggested How to Make a Book Your Own If you have the habit of asking a book questions as you read, you are a better reader than if you do not. But, as we have indicated, merely asking questions is not enough. You have to try to answer them. And although that could be done, theoretically, in your mind only, it is much easier to do it with a pencil in your hand. The pencil then becomes the sign of your alertness while you read. It is an old saying that you have to “read between the lines” to get the most out of anything. The rules of reading are a formal way of saying this. But we want to persuade you to “write between the lines,” too. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.... There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here are some devices that can be used: UNDERLINING—of major points; of important or forceful statements. VERTICAL LINES AT THE MARGIN—to emphasize a statement already underlined or to point to a passage too long to be underlined. STAR, ASTERISK, OR OTHER DOODAD AT THE MARGIN—to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or dozen most important statements or passages in the book. You may want to fold a corner of each page on which you make such marks or place a slip of paper between the pages. In either case, you will be able to take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it to the indicated page, refresh your recollection. NUMBERS IN THE MARGIN—to indicate a sequence of points made by the author in developing an argument. NUMBERS OF OTHER PAGES IN THE MARGIN—to indicate where else in the book the author makes the same points, or points relevant to or in contradiction of those here marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together. Many readers use the symbol “Cf” to indicate the other page numbers; it means “compare” or “refer to.” CIRCLING OF KEY WORDS OR PHRASES—This serves much the same function as underlining. WRITING IN THE MARGIN, OR AT THE TOP OR BOTTOM OF THE PAGE—to record questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raises in your mind; to reduce a complicated discussion to a simple statement; to record the sequence of major points right through the book. The endpapers at the back of the book can be used to make a personal index of the author’s points in the order of their appearance

Forming the Habit of Reading Any art or skill is possessed by those who have formed the habit of operating according to its rules. This is the way the artist or crafsman in any field differs from those who lack his skill. Now there is no other way of forming a habit of operation than by operating. That is what it means to say one learns to do by doing. The difference between your activity before and after you have formed a habit is a difference in facility and readiness. After practice, you can do the same thing much better than when you started. That is what it means to say practice makes perfect. What you do very imperfectly at first, you gradually come to do with the kind of almost automatic perfection that an instinctive performance has. You do something as if you were born to it, as if the activity were as natural to you as walking or eating. That is what it means to say that habit is second nature. Knowing the rules of an art is not the same as having the habit. When we speak of a man as skilled in any way, we do not mean that he knows the rules of making or doing something, but that he possesses the habit of making or doing it.

FROM MANY RULES TO ONE HABIT All of this is common knowledge about learning a complex skill. We say it here merely because we want you to realize that learning to read is at least as complex as learning to ski or to typewrite or to play tennis. If you can recall your patience in any other learning experience you have had, you will be more tolerant of instructors who will shortly enumerate a long list of rules for reading. The person who has had one experience in acquiring a complex skill knows that he need not fear the array of rules that present themselves at the beginning of something new to be learned. He knows that he does not have to worry about how all the separate acts in which he must become separately proficient are going to work together. The multiplicity of the rules indicates the complexity of the one habit to be formed, not a plurality of distinct habits. The parts coalesce and telescope as each reaches the stage of automatic execution. When all the subordinate acts can be done more or less automatically, you have formed the habit of the whole performance. Then you can think about tackling an expert run you have never skied before, or reading a book that you once thought was too difficult for you. At the beginning, the learner pays attention to himself and his skill in the separate acts. When the acts have lost their separateness in the skill of the whole performance, the learner can at last pay attention to the goal that the technique he has acquired enables him to reach”

Rules of Reading

I THE FIRST STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING: RULES FOR FINDING WHAT A BOOK IS ABOUT

Classify the book according to kind and subject matter

State what the whole book is about with utmost brevity

Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole

Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve

II THE SECOND STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING: RULES FOR INTERPRETING A BOOK'S CONTENTS

Come to terms with the author by intepreting his key words

Grasp the author's leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences

Know the author's arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences

Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and of the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve

III THE THIRD STAGE OT ANALYTICAL READING: RULES FOR CRITICIZING A BOOK AS A COMMUNICATION OF KNOWLEDGE

A General Maxims of Intellectual Etiquette

Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book. (Do not say you agree, disagree, or suspend judgment, until you can say "I understand")

Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously

Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make

B Special Criteria For Points of Criticism

Show wherein the author is uninformed

Show wherein the author is misinformed

Show wherein the author is illogical

Show wherein the author's analysis or account is incomplete

Note: of these last four, the first three are criteria for disagreement. Failing in all of these, you must agree, at least in part, although you may suspend judgment on the whole, in the light of the past point.

The Liberal Arts

The ordering of knowledge has changed with the centuries. All knowledge was once ordered in relation to the seven liberal arts—grammar, rhetoric, and logic, the trivium; arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, the quadrivium. Medieval encylopedias reflected this arrangement. Since the universities were arranged according to the same system, and students studied according to it also, the arrangement was useful in education. The modern university is very different from the medieval one, and the change is reflected in modern encyclopedias. The knowledge that they report is divided up in fiefs, or specialties, that are roughly equivalent to the various departments of the university. But this arrangement, although it forms the backbone structure of an encyclopedia, is masked by the alphabetical arrangement of the material.

Summary of Syntopical Reading

We have now completed our discussion of syntopical reading. Let us therefore display the various steps that must be taken at this level of reading in outline form. As we have seen, there are two main stages of syntopical reading. One is preparatory, and the other is syntopical reading proper. Let us write out all of these steps for review. I. Surveying the Field Preparatory to Syntopical Reading

Create a tentative bibliography of your subject by recourse to library catalogues, advisors, and bibliographies in books

Inspect all of the books on the tentative bibliography to ascertain which are germane to your subject, and also to acquire a clearer idea of the subject.

Note: These two steps are not, strictly speaking, chronologically distinct; that is, the two steps have an effect on each other, with the second, in particular, serving to modify the first. II. Syntopical Reading of the Bibliography Amassed in Stage I

Inspect the books already identified as relevant to your subject in Stage I in order to find the most relevant passages.

Bring the authors to terms by constructing a neutral terminology of the subject that all, or the great majority, of the authors can be interpreted as employing, whether they actually employ the words or not.

Establish a set of neutral propositions for all of the authors by framing a set of questions to which all or most of the authors can be interpreted as giving answers, whether they actually treat the questions explicitly or not.

Define the issues, both major and minor ones, by ranging the opposing answers of authors to the various questions on one side of an issue or another. You should remember that an issue does not always exist explicitly between or among authors, but that it sometimes has to be constructed by interpretation of the authors’ views on matters that may not have been their primary concern.

Analyze the discussion by ordering the questions and issues in such a way as to throw maximum light on the subject. More general issues should precede less general ones, and relations among issues should be clearly indicated.