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Since we have now described the first stage of analytical reading, let us pause a moment to write out the first four rules in order, under the appropriate heading, for review.

The First Stage of Analytical Readi ng,

or Rules for Finding What a Book Is About 1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.

2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.

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

4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve.

8

COM I NG TO TERMS

WITH AN AUTHO R

The first stage of analytical reading has been accomplished when you have applied the four rules listed at the end of the last chapter, which together allow you to tell what a book is about and to outline its structure. You are now ready to go on to the next stage, which also comprises four rules of reading.

The first of these we call, for short, coming to terms.

Coming to terms is usually the last step in any successful business negotiation. All that remains is to sign on the dotted line. But in the analytical reading of a book, coming to terms is the first step beyond the outline. Unless the reader comes to terms with the author, the communication of knowledge from one to the other does not take place. For a term is the basic element of communicable knowledge.

Words vs. Terms

A term is not a word-at least, not just a word without further qualifications. If a term and a word were exactly the same, you would only have to find the important words in a book in order to come to terms with it. But a word can have many meanings, especially an important word. If the author uses a word in one meaning, and the reader reads it in another, 96

Coming to Terms With an Author 97

words have passed between them, but they have not come to terms. Where there is unresolved ambiguity in communication, there is no communication, or at best communication must be incomplete.

Just look at the word "communication" for a moment. Its root is related to the word "common." We speak of a community as a group of people who have something in common.

Communication is an effort on the part of one person to share something with another person ( or with an animal or a machine ) : his knowledge, his decisions, his sentiments. It succeeds only when it results in a common something, such as an item of information or knowledge that two parties share.

When there is ambiguity in the communication of knowledge, all that is in common are the words that one person speaks or writes and another hears or reads. So long as ambiguity persists, there is no meaning in common between writer and reader. For the communication to be successfully completed, therefore, it is necessary for the two parties to use the same words with the same meanings-in short, to come to terms. When that happens, communication happens, the miracle of two minds with but a single thought.

A term can be defined as an unambiguous word. That is not quite accurate, for strictly there are no unambiguous words.

What we should have said is that a term is a word used unambiguously. The dictionary is full of words. They are almost all ambiguous in the sense that they have many meanings. But a word that has several meanings can be used in one sense at a time. When writer and reader somehow manage for a time to use a given word with one and only one meaning, then, during that time of unambiguous usage, they have come to terms.

You cannot find terms in dictionaries, though the materials for making them are there. Terms occur only in the process of communication. They occur when a writer tries to avoid ambiguity and a reader helps him by trying to follow his use of words. There are, of course, many degrees of success in this.

Coming to terms is the ideal toward which writer and reader 98 HOW TO READ A BOOK

should strive. Since this is one of the primary achievements of the art of writing and reading, we can think of terms as a skilled