Mortimer Adler How to Read a Book Pdf

This is a volume summary of How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (Amazon).

🔒 There was then much good stuff in this book that I couldn't fit it all into this (already long) volume summary. If you're interested in the most applied and actionable summary out there—including details on how to skim, how to take notes, and more—check out the Premium companion post: How to Read Intelligently with "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler (+ Infographics)

How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler was originally published in 1940. It was then revised and co-authored in 1972 with Charles Van Doren.

"Sure things have not changed in the last 30 years. 1 abiding is that, to attain all the purposes of reading, the desideratum must exist the ability to read unlike things at dissimilar—appropriate—speeds, not everything at the greatest possible speed. As Pascal observed three hundred years agone, 'When we read too fast or also slowly, we empathize nothing.'" — Mortimer Adler

Quick Housekeeping:

All content in quotation marks is from the author unless otherwise stated.
All content not in quotation marks is paraphrased from original quotes.
I've added emphasis in bold for readability/skimmability.
I've organized content into my own themes.

Book Summary Contents: Click a link hither to jump to a section below

About the Book

The Art of Reading:

Active Reading
Reading every bit Learning
Reading for Understanding
Reading and the Growth of the Mind
Four Questions to ask while Reading

The 4 Levels of Reading:

Elementary Reading
Inspectional Reading
Analytical Reading
Syntopical Reading

The Art of Reading: "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler (Book Summary)

About the Book

"This is a volume for readers and for those who wish to become readers. Particularly, it is for readers of books. Even more particularly, information technology is for those whose main purpose in reading books is to proceeds increased understanding."

"Past 'readers' we hateful people who are however accustomed, every bit about every literate and intelligent person used to be, to gain a large share of their information almost and their understanding of the globe from the written word. Not all of it, of grade; even in the days before radio and television, a certain amount of data and agreement was acquired through spoken words and through observation. Merely for intelligent and curious people that was never enough. They knew that they had to read too, and they did read."
"We must become a nation of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word competent implies. Nothing less volition satisfy the needs of the globe that is coming."
"If we are disposed to go along learning and discovering, we must know how to make books teach u.s. well. That, indeed, is the primary goal of this book."

The Art of Reading

"The art of reading is the skill of catching every sort of communication as well equally possible … We can roughly define what we mean by the art of reading every bit follows: the process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on just the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside, elevates itself past the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to understanding more. The skilled operations that cause this to happen are the various acts that establish the art of reading."

Active Reading:

"Action is the essence of good reading, and that the more active reading is, the amend information technology is."

"The one simple prescription for active reading. It is: Ask questions while you read—questions that you lot yourself must effort to answer in the course of reading."
"Since reading of any sort is an activity, all reading must to some degree be active. Completely passive reading is incommunicable; we cannot read with our optics immobilized and our minds asleep. Hence when we contrast agile with passive reading, our purpose is, first, to telephone call attention to the fact that reading can be more or less active, and 2nd, to betoken out that the more active the reading the better. I reader is better than another in proportion as he is capable of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more endeavour. He is better if he demands more than of himself and of the text before him."
"What does active reading entail? We will return to this question many times in this volume. For the moment, it suffices to say that, given the same affair to read, one person reads it better than some other, first, by reading information technology more than actively, and 2d, by performing each of the acts involved more skillfully. These two things are related. Reading is a circuitous action, merely as writing is. It consists of a big number of separate acts, all of which must be performed in a good reading. The person who tin can perform more of them is improve able to read."

Reading equally Learning:

Aided Discovery = The art of reading books or learning from discourse; pedagogy; being taught.

Unaided Discovery = The art of reading nature or the world; learning something past research, investigation, or reflection, without being taught.

"The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection."
"We tin can learn only from our 'betters.' Nosotros must know who they are and how to learn from them. The person who has this sort of knowledge possesses the art of reading in the sense with which we are peculiarly concerned in this book."
"Although the teacher may help his student in many ways, information technology is the student himself who must do the learning. Knowledge must grow in his mind if learning is to take place."
"If you ask a book a question, you must respond information technology yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the earth. When you lot question information technology, it answers yous merely to the extent that you exercise the work of thinking and analysis yourself."
"The task falls mainly on yous—it is y'all who, henceforth, must do all the work (and obtain all the benefits)."
"When we speak of someone as 'well-read,' we should have this ideal in heed. Too often, nosotros use that phrase to mean the quantity rather than the quality of reading. A person who has read widely only not well deserves to be pitied rather than praised."
"In that location are, of course, many books worth reading well. At that place is a much larger number that should be merely inspected. To become well-read, in every sense of the discussion, one must know how to employ whatever skill i possesses with bigotry—past reading every book co-ordinate to its claim."

Reading for Understanding:

"This book is about the art of reading for the sake of increased understanding."

"Without external help of any sort, you lot go to work on the book. With zilch only the power of your ain listen, you operate on the symbols before you lot in such a way that yous gradually lift yourself from a land of understanding less to ane of understanding more . Such elevation, accomplished past the mind working on a book, is highly skilled reading, the kind of reading that a book which challenges your understanding deserves."
"What are the conditions under which this kind of reading—reading for understanding—takes identify? There are 2. First, there is initial inequality in understanding. The writer must exist 'superior' to the reader in understanding, and his book must convey in readable form the insights he possesses and his potential readers lack. Second, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some caste, seldom perhaps fully, but e'er budgeted equality with the writer. To the extent that equality is approached, clarity of communication is achieved."
"To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all almost: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects information technology is the aforementioned, in what respects it is unlike, and then forth."
"Enlightenment is accomplished only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you lot know what he ways and why he says information technology."

Reading and the Growth of the Mind:

"Reading well, which means reading actively, is thus not only a good in itself, nor is it merely a means to advocacy in our piece of work or career. It besides serves to keep our minds alive and growing."

"At that place is a strange fact nigh the human mind, a fact that differentiates the mind sharply from the body. The body is limited in means that the mind is non. 1 sign of this is that the body does not continue indefinitely to grow in strength and develop in skill and grace. By the time well-nigh people are thirty years old, their bodies are as good as they will ever be; in fact, many persons' bodies take begun to deteriorate by that time. But there is no limit to the amount of growth and evolution that the mind can sustain. The heed does not stop growing at whatever particular age; only when the brain itself loses its vigor, in senescence, does the mind lose its power to increment in skill and understanding."
"This is ane of the most remarkable things well-nigh human beings, and information technology may actually exist the major difference betwixt Homo sapiens and the others animals, which practise non seem to grow mentally beyond a certain phase in their development. But this smashing advantage that man possesses carries with it a peachy peril. The mind tin can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used. Atrophy of the mental muscles is the penalty that we pay for not taking mental do. And this is a terrible penalty, for there is evidence that atrophy of the heed is a mortal disease."
"A skilful volume does reward you for trying to read it. The best books advantage you lot nearly of all. The reward, of form, is of two kinds. First, there is the improvement in your reading skill that occurs when yous successfully tackle a good, difficult work. Second—and this in the long run is much more important—a good book can teach you about the globe and about yourself. Yous larn more than how to read meliorate; you lot also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not but more knowledgeable—books that provide nil but information can produce that issue. But wiser, in the sense that you are more than deeply enlightened of the swell and enduring truths of human life."
"There is a 2d class of books from which you can larn—both how to read and how to live. Less than one out of every hundred books belongs in this class—probably it is more like one in a thousand, or even i in ten thousand. These are the good books, the ones that were carefully wrought by their authors, the ones that convey to the reader significant insights near subjects of indelible interest to homo beings. There are in all probably no more than than a few yard such books."

Iv Questions to ask About Annihilation You Read:

"Knowing what the four questions are is not enough. Y'all must recall to inquire them as you read. The habit of doing that is the mark of a demanding reader. More that, y'all must know how to answer them precisely and accurately. The trained ability to do that is the art of reading."

1. "What is the book about as a whole?" (Discover the leading theme and subordinate themes/topics—Inspectional Reading)
ii. "What is existence said in detail, and how?" (Notice the master ideas, assertions, and arguments—Inspectional Reading)
iii. "Is the volume true, in whole or office?" (You cannot answer this question until you have answered the first two—Belittling Reading)
four. "What of information technology?" (If the book has given y'all information, you must inquire well-nigh its significance—Analytical/Syntopical Reading)

The Iv Levels of Reading

"In that location are 4 levels of reading. They are here called levels rather than kinds because kinds, strictly speaking, are distinct from i another, whereas it is characteristic of levels that higher ones include lower ones. So it is with the levels of reading, which are cumulative. The first level is non lost in the 2nd, the second in the 3rd, the 3rd in the quaternary. In fact, the fourth and highest level of reading includes all the others. Information technology simply goes beyond them."

1. Simple Reading:

In mastering this level, one learns the rudiments of the art of reading, receives basic grooming in reading, and acquires initial reading skills … Equally i masters this level one passes from nonliteracy to at least beginning literacy.

Elementary Reading Overview:

Other Names: Rudimentary reading, bones reading, initial reading.
Timeframe: Ordinarily learned in elementary school.
Key Question: "What does the judgement say?"

Elementary Reading Stages:

Elementary Reading Stage 1: Reading readiness. Corresponds to pre-school and kindergarten experiences.

Elementary Reading Stage 2: Word mastery. Corresponds to the start class feel of the typical child (although many quite normal children are not 'typical' in this sense), with the outcome that the child attains what we tin can call second-stage reading skills, or first form power in reading or first grade literacy.

Elementary Reading Stage 3: Vocabulary growth and the utilization of context. Typically (but not universally, even for normal children) acquired at about the end of the 4th form of simple school, and results in what is variously called 4th course, or functional, literacy—the ability, co-ordinate to i common definition, to read traffic signs or picture captions fairly easily, to fill out the simpler authorities forms, and the similar.

Elementary Reading Stage 4: Eighth grade, 9th grade, or tenth grade literacy. The final stage of uncomplicated reading is attained at about the time the educatee leaves or graduates from uncomplicated school or junior high school … The child is a 'mature' reader in the sense that he is now capable of reading almost anything, merely still in a relatively unsophisticated manner. In the simplest terms, he is mature enough to practice high school work.

A Note about Maturity:

He is not still a 'mature' reader in the sense in which nosotros want to employ the term in this volume. He has mastered the first level of reading, that is all; he can read on his own and is prepared to learn more well-nigh reading. But he does not notwithstanding know how to read beyond the elementary level … Merely when he has mastered all of the 4 stages of uncomplicated reading is the child prepared to motion on to the higher levels of reading. Simply then can he read independently and learn on his own. Only then can he begin to become a really good reader.

2. Inspectional Reading:

Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systematically … Another way to describe this level of reading is to say that its aim is to get the most out of a volume within a given time—unremarkably a relatively curt fourth dimension, and ever (past definition) too brusque a fourth dimension to get out of the book everything that can be gotten.

Inspectional Reading Overview:

Other Names: Skimming, pre-reading.
Prerequisite: You cannot read on the inspectional level unless you can read effectively on the elementary level.
Key Questions: "What is the book about?" or "What is the structure of the book?" or "What are its parts?"
Main Purpose: The best and nigh complete reading that is possible given a express time.
Characteristics: Special accent on fourth dimension.
Reading Speed: Inspectional reading is accomplished quickly, only that is not just because you lot read faster, although in fact you do; it is also because you read less of a volume when y'all give information technology an inspectional reading, and because you read it in a different fashion, with different goals in mind.

Inspectional Reading Types:

The offset thing to realize is that there are ii types of inspectional reading. They are aspects of a single skill, but the kickoff reader is well-advised to consider them as two different steps or activities. The experienced reader learns to perform both steps simultaneously, but for the moment nosotros will treat them as if they were quite distinct … The 2 steps involved in inspectional reading are both taken rapidly. The competent inspectional reader will accomplish them both speedily, no matter how long or difficult the book he is trying to read.

Inspectional Reading 1: Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading. Your main aim is to discover whether the volume requires a more than conscientious reading … Skimming can tell you lots of other things almost the book, even if you determine not to read it once again with more intendance. Giving a book this kind of quick once-over is a threshing procedure that helps you to dissever the crust from the real kernels of nourishment … You should know a good deal about the volume at this point, after having spent no more than a few minutes, at nearly an hr, with information technology.

Inspectional Reading 2: Superficial Reading. In tackling a difficult volume for the first fourth dimension, read it through without ever stopping to look upwards or ponder the things you do non understand right away … Pay attending to what you lot can understand and do not be stopped by what you cannot immediately grasp. Go right on reading past the bespeak where you take difficulties in understanding, and you volition soon come up to things you lot do understand. Concentrate on these. Keep on in this way. Read the volume through, undeterred and undismayed by the paragraphs, footnotes, comments, and references that escape you … You will have a much better take a chance of understanding it on a 2nd reading, just that requires you to have read the book through at least in one case … Do not try to understand every word or folio of a difficult book the first fourth dimension through. This is the almost important rule of all; information technology is the essence of inspectional reading. Do not be afraid to exist, or to seem to be, superficial. Race through even the hardest book. You will so be prepared to read it well the 2nd fourth dimension.

3. Analytical Reading:

The third level of reading we will call analytical reading. It is both a more complex and a more systematic activity than either of the two levels of reading discussed so far … The fine art of analytical reading applies to the reading of a single book, when understanding of that book is the aim in view.

Analytical Reading Overview:

Other Names: Thorough reading, complete reading, skilful reading—the best reading yous can do.
Prerequisites: Effective simple and inspectional reading.
Timeframe: A proficient liberal arts high school, if it does zippo else, ought to produce graduates who are competent analytical readers.
Master Purpose: The best and nearly complete reading that is possible given unlimited fourth dimension—preeminently for the sake of comprehension or agreement.
Reading Speed: Analytical reading is commonly much slower than inspectional reading, but even when y'all are giving a volume an analytical reading, y'all should not read all of it at the aforementioned rate of speed. Every book, no thing how difficult, contains interstitial fabric that can be and should be read quickly; and every good book likewise contains affair that is difficult and should exist read very slowly.

Analytical Reading Stage one:

Rules for finding what a book is about: "What is the book near as a whole?"

Belittling Reading Rule 1: Classify the book co-ordinate to kind and subject matter. You must know what kind of book you are reading, and yous should know this equally early in the process as possible, preferably before yous brainstorm to read.

Analytical Reading Rule 2: State what the whole book is almost with the utmost brevity. Direct your attention toward the unity of the volume. State the unity of the whole book in a single sentence, or at most a few sentences (a brusque paragraph).

Analytical Reading Rule three: Enumerate its major parts in their society and relation, and outline these parts as you accept outlined the whole. Direct your attention toward the complexity of the book—treating the parts as if they were subordinate wholes, each with a unity and complexity of its own. Set up forth the major parts of the book, and prove how these are organized into a whole, by existence ordered to one another and to the unity of the whole. Land the parts that make up the unity.

Analytical Reading Rule 4: Ascertain the problem or issues the author is trying to solve. The author of a book starts with a question or a set of questions. The book ostensibly contains the reply or answers. Find out what the writer'southward issues were.

Analytical Reading Phase 2:

Rules for interpreting a book's contents: "What is being said in detail, and how?"

Belittling Reading Rule 5: Come to terms with the author past interpreting his key words. Coming to terms is the showtime pace beyond the outline. The first part is to locate the of import words, the words that make a departure. The second function is to determine the meaning of these words, as used, with precision. The main betoken is that 1 word can exist the vehicle for many terms, and one term tin can be expressed by many words. You must spot the of import words in a book and effigy out how the author is using them. Unless the reader comes to terms with the writer, the communication of knowledge from one to the other does not accept place. For a term is the basic element of communicable cognition. If the writer uses a word in one meaning, and the reader reads information technology in another, words accept passed between them, only they accept not come to terms. For the communication to be successfully completed, therefore, it is necessary for the ii parties to utilise the same words with the same meanings—in brusk, to come to terms. Since this is one of the principal achievements of the art of writing and reading, we can think of terms equally a skilled use of words for the sake of communicating knowledge.

Analytical Reading Dominion 6: Grasp the author's leading propositions by dealing with his well-nigh of import sentences. Marking the well-nigh important sentences in a book and discover the propositions they contain. His propositions are nothing but expressions of personal opinion unless they are supported by reasons. If it is the volume and the subject with which it deals that we are interested in, and not just the author, we desire to know not only what his propositions are, but also why he thinks we should be persuaded to accept them.

Analytical Reading Rule 7: Know the author'due south arguments, past finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences. Locate or construct the basic arguments in the book by finding them in the connection of sentences. Find if you lot can the paragraphs in a book that state its important arguments; but if the arguments are non thus expressed, your task is to construct them, past taking a sentence from this paragraph, and one from that, until you have gathered together the sequence of sentences that country the propositions that compose the argument.

Analytical Reading Rule viii: Determine which of his problems the writer has solved, and which he has non; and of the latter, determine which the writer knew he had failed to solve. Find out what the author'southward solutions are. When you accept applied this rule, and the three that precede it in interpretive reading, you tin feel reasonably sure that you accept managed to empathise the volume.

Analytical Reading Stage iii:

Rules for criticizing a volume as a advice of noesis: "Is it truthful?" and "What of it?"

General Maxims of Intellectual Etiquette:

Analytical Reading Dominion 9: You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, "I empathise," earlier you tin say any 1 of the post-obit things: "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend judgment." Complete the job of agreement before rushing in. Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your estimation of the book.

Analytical Reading Rule 10: When you disagree, do so reasonably, and not disputatiously or contentiously. There is no point in winning an argument if you know or suspect you are incorrect. Practically, of form, it may go you ahead in the globe for a short fourth dimension. But honesty is the better policy in the slightly longer run.

Analytical Reading Rule 11: Respect the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by giving reasons for any critical judgment you make. View disagreement about matters of knowledge as being mostly remediable. Give reasons for disagreements and then that problems are not but stated but also defined. In that lies all hope for resolution.

Special Criteria for Points of Criticism:

Of these last 4 below, the first three are criteria for disagreement. Failing in all of these, y'all must concur, at least in part, although you may suspend judgment on the whole, in the lite of the last bespeak.

Analytical Reading Rule 12: Show wherein the author is uninformed.
Analytical Reading Dominion 13: Show wherein the author is misinformed.
Analytical Reading Rule 14: Show wherein the author is illogical.
Belittling Reading Rule fifteen: Prove wherein the writer's analysis or account is incomplete.

four. Syntopical Reading:

The reading of two or more books on the aforementioned subject … Knowing that more than than one book is relevant to a detail question is the offset requirement in any projection of syntopical reading. Knowing which books should be read, in a general fashion, is the second requirement. The 2d requirement is a bang-up deal harder to satisfy than the commencement.

Syntopical Reading Overview:

Other Names: Comparative reading.
Prerequisites: Both inspectional and analytical reading can be considered every bit anticipations or preparations for syntopical reading.
Timeframe: A skillful college, if information technology does nothing else, ought to produce competent syntopical readers. A higher caste ought to stand for general competence in reading such that a graduate could read any kind of cloth for full general readers and be able to undertake independent enquiry on almost whatsoever field of study (for that is what syntopical reading, amidst other things, enables you to do).
Main Purpose: The special quality that a syntopical assay tries to accomplish can be summarized in the ii words "dialectical objectivity." The syntopical reader, in short, tries to await at all sides and to accept no sides.
Characteristics: The most active, effortful, circuitous, and systematic kind of reading. It makes very heavy demands on the reader, fifty-fifty if the materials he is reading are themselves relatively easy and unsophisticated. It is not an like shooting fish in a barrel fine art, and the rules for it are not widely known. Nevertheless, syntopical reading is probably the almost rewarding of all reading activities. The benefits are so great that it is well worth the trouble of learning how to do it.

How Syntopical Reading Works:

Syntopical reading involves reading authors widely separated in space and time, and differing radically in style and arroyo, as if they were members of the same universe of discourse.
When reading syntopically, the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them in relation to i another and to a subject field most which they all revolve.
With the assist of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an assay of the subject that may not exist in whatsoever of the books.
The conscientious syntopical reader may resort to ane obvious device and use it as much as possible. That is, he must constantly refer back to the actual text of his authors, reading the relevant passages over and over; and, in presenting the results of his work to a wider audience, he must quote the opinion or statement of an author in the writer's own language.

The Paradox of Syntopical Reading:

Unless you lot know what books to read, you cannot read syntopically, but unless you can read syntopically, y'all do not know what to read. Another mode to state it is in the form of what may be chosen the key problem of syntopical reading, namely, that if you lot do not know where to start, you cannot read syntopically; and fifty-fifty if you lot have a rough idea of where to brainstorm, the time required to find the relevant books and relevant passages in those books may exceed the fourth dimension required to take all of the other steps combined.

Syntopical Reading Steps:

Surveying the Field Preparatory to Syntopical Reading:

These 2 steps are non, strictly speaking, chronologically distinct; that is, the 2 steps accept an outcome on each other, with the second, in detail, serving to modify the first.

Pre-Syntopical Reading Step i: Create a tentative bibliography of your subject.
Pre-Syntopical Reading Step 2: 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. You should not read any of them analytically before inspecting all of them. Inspectional reading will not acquaint you with all of the intricacies of the subject matter, or with all of the insights that your authors can provide, but information technology volition perform two essential functions. Kickoff, it will give you a clear enough idea of your discipline so that your subsequent belittling reading of some of the books on the list is productive. And 2d, it will allow you to cut downwardly your bibliography to a more manageable size.

Syntopical Reading of the Bibliography:

Dialectical detachment or objectivity should, ideally, be maintained throughout. One way to insure this is ever to back-trail an interpretation of an author'south views on an issue with an actual quotation from his text.

Syntopical Reading Step i: Finding the relevant passages. Inspect the books already identified every bit relevant to your bailiwick in social club to observe the most relevant passages. Above all, retrieve that your task is not and so much to reach an overall agreement of the detail book before y'all every bit to find out how information technology tin can be useful to yous. In syntopical reading, it is you and your concerns that are primarily to be served, not the books that you read. In this sense, syntopical reading is the almost active reading yous tin can do. Belittling reading is also active, merely when you read a book analytically you put yourself in a relation to it of disciple to master. When y'all read syntopically, you must be the master of the situation.

Syntopical Reading Step 2: Bringing the authors to terms. Bring the authors to terms by constructing a neutral terminology of the bailiwick that all, or the great majority, of the authors can exist interpreted as employing, whether they actually employ the words or not. In interpretive reading (the 2nd stage of belittling reading) the commencement rule requires you to come to terms with the writer, which means identifying his key words and discovering how he uses them. Just now you lot are faced with a number of unlike authors, and it is unlikely that they volition have all used the same words, or even the aforementioned terms. Thus it is y'all who must establish the terms, and bring your authors to them rather than the other way around. The reader who cannot encounter through the language to the terms and propositions will never be able to compare such related works. This is probably the about difficult step in syntopical reading. What information technology actually comes down to is forcing an author to use your language, rather than using his. Syntopical reading, in brusque, is to a large extent an exercise in translation—creating a neutral terminology that applies to all or most of the authors examined.

Syntopical Reading Step three: Getting the questions articulate. 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 every bit giving answers, whether they really treat the questions explicitly or not. The second rule of interpretive reading requires us to find the author's key sentences, and from them to develop an understanding of his propositions. Propositions are made upward of terms, and of course nosotros must exercise a similar task on the works nosotros are reading syntopically. Just since nosotros ourselves are establishing the terminology in this case, we are faced with the task of establishing a set of neutral propositions besides. The best way to do this is to frame a fix of questions that shed light on our problem, and to which each of our authors gives answers.

Syntopical Reading Step four: Defining the issues. Define the issues, both major and minor ones, by ranging the opposing answers of authors to the various questions on one side of an effect or another. You should recall that an issue does not always exist explicitly between or among authors, only that information technology sometimes has to exist constructed by interpretation of the authors' views on matters that may not have been their master concern. Define and arrange the issues produced by differing answers to the questions. If a question is articulate, and if nosotros can be reasonably sure that authors answer it in dissimilar ways—perhaps pro and con—then an event has been divers. It is the consequence between the authors who respond the question in 1 style, and those who answer it in one or another opposing fashion.

Syntopical Reading Footstep v: Analyzing the discussion. Analyze the word by ordering the questions and issues in such a way as to throw maximum light on the bailiwick. More full general issues should precede less full general ones, and relations among issues should exist conspicuously indicated. The first four steps represent to the first two groups of rules for belittling reading. Those rules, when followed and practical to any book, allowed us to reply the questions, "What does it say?" and "How does it say information technology?" In our syntopical reading project, we are similarly able at this indicate to reply the same questions near the give-and-take concerning our problem. In the case of the analytical reading of a single work, ii farther questions remained to be answered, namely, "Is it true?" and "What of it?" In the case of syntopical reading, nosotros are at present prepared to address ourselves to similar questions nearly the word.

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