On Reading Aloud

Back in the fourth century, tongues started wagging when Augustine of Hippo walked in on Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, and found him . . . reading to himself:

When he read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud.
(The Confessions, c. 397-400)

Whether Augustine was impressed or appalled by the bishop's reading habits remains a matter of scholarly dispute. What's clear is that earlier in our history silent reading was considered a rare achievement.

In our time, even the phrase "silent reading" must strike many adults as odd, even redundant. After all, silently is the way most of us have been reading since the age of five or six. And if we happen to be trapped on a bus alongside someone with a copy of, say, Paris Hilton's Your Heiress Diary: Confess It All to Me, we should be profoundly grateful that this is the case.

Nevertheless, in the comfort of our own homes, cubicles, and classrooms, there may still be some value in reading aloud. Two advantages come to mind.

1. Read Aloud to Revise Your Own Prose

As suggested in our Revision Checklist, reading a draft aloud may enable us to hear problems (of tone, emphasis, syntax) that our eyes alone might not detect. The trouble may lie in a sentence that gets twisted on our tongue or in a single word that rings a false note. As Isaac Asimov once said, "Either it sounds right or it doesn't sound right." So if we find ourselves stumbling over a passage, it's likely that our readers will be similarly distracted or confused. Time then to recast the sentence or seek a more appropriate word.

2. Read Aloud to Savor the Prose of the Masters

In his superb book Analyzing Prose (Continuum, 2003), rhetorician Richard Lanham advocates reading good prose out loud as "a daily practice" to counter the "bureaucratic, unvoiced, asocial official style" that anesthetizes so many of us in the workplace. The distinctive voices of great writers invite us to listen as well as to read.

When a young writer asks for advice on how to develop her own distinctive voice, I usually say, "Keep reading, keep writing, and keep listening." To do all three effectively, I have a hunch that it helps to read out loud.

Recommended Site:
Read Aloud America
"Founded in Hawaii in 1995 by Jed Gaines, Read Aloud America is a nonprofit 501(C)3 organization that promotes literacy, encourages a love of reading in adults and children, and increases children's prospects for success in school and life."

Image: a 1470 painting on wood depicts the fourth century author of The Confessions, St. Augustine of Hippo