Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
Around 1450, in the German city of Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg began printing with movable metal type. Until then a book had to be copied by hand, often by a scribe who worked on it for months, and its price was prohibitive for anyone outside a monastery, a court or a rich household. By the mid-1450s Gutenberg’s workshop had finished a Bible. Within fifty years presses were at work in cities across Europe, and books became much cheaper and more numerous.
It is tempting to conclude that the press turned people into readers. What it did was narrower. A cheap book is of no use to someone who was never taught letters, and schooling did not spread at the speed of print. For generations most people still could not read. What changed first was what there was to read. Printers had stock to sell, so they turned more and more from Latin to the languages people spoke at home, and short pamphlets carried arguments well beyond the scholars who had once kept them among themselves. In the religious quarrels that followed Martin Luther’s protest in 1517, such pamphlets were read aloud to crowds, and many in those crowds had never held a book.
Who owned the presses mattered just as much, since a press prints whatever its owner chooses. In 1556 Jesuit priests brought a press to Goa, the first in India, and used it mainly for religious works. In Europe, rulers and churches soon learned to license printers and to ban books they disliked. Catholic books came to carry the Latin word imprimatur, ‘let it be printed’, as proof that a church official had allowed them.
Which of the following is the most suitable title for the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → More to Read, Not Yet More Readers
This title sums up the writer’s main point about the press.
- “More to Read”: books became cheaper and more numerous, in home languages, with pamphlets as well.
- “Not Yet More Readers”: schooling was slow, and for generations most people still could not read.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Gutenberg’s Bible: The Book That Changed Europe — Incorrect. Too narrow: The Bible gets one sentence. The passage is about the press as a whole and who could read.
Option 3: From Mainz to Goa: The Spread of the Printing Trade — Incorrect. Wrong focus: The places are only facts in the passage. Its argument is about readers and control of print, not about the trade.
Option 4: How Cheap Books Taught the World to Read — Incorrect. Contradicted: The writer says a cheap book is of no use to someone never taught letters. Cheap books alone did not make readers.