🚀 go-pugleaf

Henry Hanna <Use-Author-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote in message news

> A long time ago I read a book by McLuhan stating
> that silent reading was invented in the middle ages.
> 
> Was this such a difficult thing that needed to be
> "invented"?
> 
> Why did the scribes read aloud before then?
> Wasn't it noisy and distracting?

> The first regulations requiring scribes to be silent
> in the monastic scriptoriums date from the ninth
> century.34 Until then, they had worked either by
> dictation or by reading to themselves out loud the
> text they were copying.  [...]
> 
> Once silent reading became the norm in the
> scriptorium, communication among the scribes was done
> by signs: if a scribe required a new book to copy, he
> would pretend to turn over imaginary pages; 

I read McLuhan as well, absorbing text

I nearly forgot that speaking also has its musical quality. 
Often forgot that before the middle-ages bards would sing 
their news, because there wer'nt any newspapers to be had! 
(Why did they sing?)
and that in some towns in the UK there is a tradition of 
town criers.

(This is probably off topic now but)
Another part of person to person communication is gestural.
It is understood that Giotto and other early painters posed
their figures in specific ways to enhance meaning. Examples of
NVC in current use can be found at the stock market, the races,
through mime and dance (you might have even used this yourself 
when ordering a drink at a rowdy bar after midnight!)
I suppose there are times when one is just so choked with human 
feeling that the only recourse is to gesticulate, but essentially
good manners require some knowledge of regional gestural custom.