Over the years I have been taught very different ways to annotate. I've had teachers that wanted me to just highlight and create a legend for what each color means, and other teachers who created this whole system where I had to remember the differences between squiggly lines, underlines, double underlined, circled, and starred annotations. After going through all the different methods I have to say that I have a love/hate relationship with annotating. On the one hand, I like to write notes about what I consider important and it honestly helps me pay closer attention to what I am reading besides the obvious entertainment of the story. On the other hand, it feels like I am vandalizing my books if I have to write on them and my annotations seem to be long if I end up writing something next to what I underlined. It also consciously bothers me how long it takes for me to read and annotate a text. Sometimes I just feel like I have to find something on each page or there is a "right answer" that I have to find.
Nonetheless, there is just no going around annotating. Now, when I have a choice, I like to circle the words I don't know, and write my little comments on sticky notes. Occasionally, if I really like a particular sentence, instead of rewriting it I tend to (while cringing) underline the portion of text. I also like to highlight, but I don't think I ever got the whole "highlight important things" aspects down because I tend to highlight from 1/3 to 1/2 of the content. So if I do end up highlighting then it would only be on a paper copy.
When it comes to marking up certain parts of the text, I tend to ask myself questions or predictions about the text or just write down things that I have noticed.
You aren't alone in the over highlighting aspect of annotation, I have a similar issue where I look back at my annotations and find far too much is highlighted to realistically discern value from those annotations. I find this especially true for non-fiction books because i'm highlighting important ideas, and depending on the book those can go on for pages. That is why I use a combination of highlighting and underlining: I highlight broader points and underline more specific portions of the text.
ReplyDeleteFor this reason, I always find writing in the margins a bette tool than highlighting--sometimes you won't switch from highlighter to pen and therefore note why you highlighted something, and when you look back at it, you can't remember!
DeleteHi Monique! I really related to what you said about feeling weird about writing in books. It feels like I’m disrupting the text in a way. Being encouraged to write in books has definitely taken some getting used to. Recently, I reread some books I had annotated and it was really nice to see how my ideas have changed over time.
ReplyDeleteAnnotating taking a long time is very relatable to me, and I definitely used to have the problem of highlighting almost everything since most of it seemed important in my eyes. I've begun to think of it as less what is important and more so what is something I think I should remember.
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