Without tangible evidence to support the exact date of when the act of silent reading began, the birth of this form of reading can only be assumed through the various theories of different scholars. It is through these theories that one can estimate at which time period silent reading was commonly practiced. One speculation of its origin is garnered through the transformation of literature (Jajdelska 3). In comparison to earlier works of prose, works from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries prose “imply a silent reader who conceives of himself or herself as the hearer of an internal voice, that of the notional writer” (Jajdelska 3), whereas examples of earlier prose “imply a reader who read aloud to an audience, and whose physical presence acted as an orientation point for time and space in the text” (Jajdelska 3). Another speculation is that silent reading began dring the Middle Ages. This assumption is supported by evidence displaying that in Western culture, especially individuals from ecclesiastical estates, such as St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, have often engaged in private reading in silence (Boyarin, 19). There is also another assumption that the rise of the erotic genre, particularly of Dante’s, has led people to engage in private acts of reading (Boyarin 21). In any case, all written literature at any given time was “clearly available for private reading” (Coleman 37).

As previously mentioned, much of the speculation about the origin of silent reading seems to point toward the Middle Ages, especially with the invention of manuscript books. Marshall McLuhan argues that scribal practices during the Middle Ages allowed oral communication through visual culture but it is print culture that has made silent reading possible (Saenger, Silent Reading 368). Despite his argument, silent reading did take place during the Medieval period, as in St. Augustine note in his Confessions of St. Ambrose’s peculiar habit of reading and studying the holy scripture without moving his lips (Burleigh, 63) although the common act of reading during this era was to read aloud. The evidence supporting the assumption that reading aloud was a common type of reading, within Middle Ages, can be proven through Troilus and Criseyde by Chaucer, the literature of that time. When Pandarus was looking for his niece Criseyde, she is with her friends whom they seemingly listening to a story through a teller but tells Pandarus afterwards that she had been reading with her friends: “while hem leste./ … she seyde, / ‘This romaunce is of Thebes that we rede;'” (Barney, 71). Unlike McLuhan, Paul Saenger argues that the birth of silent reading was not due to print culture but rather due to the innovation of spacing between words (Saenger, Silent Reading 371).

The separation of words was used to assist illiterate Celts in Ireland. As Latin was the official language at that time (12th century), Roman readers were familiar enough to make word spacing unnecessary. However, “eighth-century Saxon and Celtic priests, living on the fringes of what had been the Roman Empire, had a weak grasp of Latin and needed spaces between words to recognize them in order to pronounce liturgical texts correctly as they read aloud” (Saenger, Silent Reading 377). The division of words not only helped in reading aloud, but also allowed medieval scribes to copy the text silently (Saenger, Space Between Words 127). Subsequently, the punctuations were often used as aesthetic purpose by the scribes but this invention did lead to our present day punctuation system (Parkes 128).

Another aspect that contributed to silent reading during the Middle Ages’ is people’s appreciation of literatures. Jajdelska argues that the change in reading practice from “extensive” to “intensive” have made silent reading possible. The extensive reading “defined as cursory reading of a wide range of texts” whereas intensive reading is “examination and rereading of a limited range of texts” (Jadelsak 21). Robert Darnton also concurs with her theory by arguing that this impressive reading habit during the Middle Ages has made it possible for proliferating reading societies later on in the history (Darnton 79).