Effective Text Marking
Effective Text Marking
Transcript
Text marking: marking or annotating our text as we read. We know that we should do it, but we don't always know why we should do it. We're going to talk a little bit now about why we mark our text and how to make those notations as effective as possible. We mark our text when we read for three primary reasons.
First, we're trying to distinguish between different types of information in our reading. In particular, we're trying to zero in on information that matters versus information that doesn't matter, information that we need to spend time remembering and studying versus information that we can overlook or ignore.
The second thing we do is we create a guide through our marking for future study of the material. You can think about your annotation of a text as a kind of trail of breadcrumbs for your future self. When you encounter that material later, you'll have a much clearer path for studying it because you've been there already, and you've left markers for yourself.
Finally, we mark our text because we're trying to make it more manageable in the future, particularly when the information is very complex or when there's a massive amount of it. In order to make it more manageable, we mark it so that we can get a better grasp of it the second time around.
So, when we're thinking about a system for marking our text, we want our system to do three things. We want it to distinguish immediately between different types of information, in other words, to help us figure out what matters and what doesn't. Second, we want it to make our future study of the material as efficient as possible, and thirdly, we want it to make our material, especially complex or abundant material, more manageable in the future. The primary technologies that we use to do this are underlining and highlighting. You do this in middle school, high school, and into college. You highlight things that are important, or you underline them. But today, I want to problematize the idea of underlining and highlighting as a technology for marking our text in the most efficient way.
The problems with highlighting and underlining are manifold. The first problem is that when you highlight or you underline something, you create a binary category. You create two types of information: information that matters and information that doesn't. And even though that's what marking is supposed to do, the material that we encounter in college is going to be more sophisticated than that, so we may need to be able to mark our text in a way to identify all kinds of importance or relative importance, rather than just importance or non-importance. And that's not really possible with highlighting or underlining. We automatically split the text into things that matter and don't, things that we should learn or not learn.
Second, the process itself is time-consuming. If we have to highlight an entire paragraph, it can take 30 seconds or even a minute, adding precious time to our reading process, which is already time-consuming. We also find, especially with dense material or technical material, that we over highlight or over underline. If you have an entire page of text that's highlighted, it doesn't really help you very much.
And finally, splitting information into only two categories doesn't require a ton of critical thought or cognitive effort, and we want our annotations, we want our text marking to require some critical thought for us to help us aid in our comprehension and our retention of the material. Here you see a page of text that's been underlined, and as you can very clearly see, it distinguishes and separates the information out into two categories, literally, categories of underlined and not underlined, but more importantly, information that we should learn versus information that we can ignore.
The same thing happens with highlighting, two categories of information. The information that's missing, critically, from this is how important these different highlighted pieces of information are relative to one another. That's the information that we want our marking system to try to capture. The system I propose here does just that. I call it the one-two-three marking system, a series of strokes next to your text that not only tells you that that text is important, but gives you an immediate indication of how important it is. One stroke being this information will probably be useful, I should try to remember it if I have time; two strokes meaning this is important, I need to learn this; three strokes being this is a key concept or idea, I should understand this fully and be able to talk about it without the use of my notes or my textbook. Another way to think about this:
One, this information is cool, it might strengthen an essay, or it's something I'd like to remember. Two, I should probably learn this material if I have enough time. Three, I need to prioritize this material because it's key, it's important, and I need to understand it fully. I've even added a fourth set of strokes here for information that the professor tells you will be on the exam. You see the system at work here. It's not that much different than underlining or highlighting, except that in a single glance, you can tell not only what's important, but how important the information is relative to each other. You can see, for example, at the very bottom of the page, a very, very important point, probably a point that would be worthy of an exam question or an essay question. And here you see that there's been an additional annotation made.
This system allows for annotations in the margins as well. The benefits of the system are manifold. One, as I've said, it allows you to distinguish quickly and easily information that is important and also how important that information is. It essentially gives you a kind of signal of the amount of importance that a particular piece of information has. Two, the system gives you a sense of how important information is relative to each other at a single glance. You don't have to spend time rereading the material to understand how important it is. Next, the marking system can be practiced easily and allows for easy alteration.
So, if you were to highlight an entire paragraph and then realize that the paragraph wasn't as important as you thought, it would be very difficult to un-highlight that paragraph. But if you were to write three strokes next to a paragraph, and then realize the paragraph isn't that important, you could very easily alter that to a single stroke, alerting you to the fact that it's worthy of remembering, but not of key critical importance. It also, again, allows for easy annotation. You can add additional words next to your strokes to help you identify why a piece of information is important or to register a question that you have.
And finally, when you're annotating your text in this way, you have no more bleeding highlighters through the page, you have no more stray underline strokes crossing out words. It also works really well on print on double-sided paper. A couple of additional things to remember:
One, if you're using heavily marked textbooks already, I would encourage you not to and to try to find a less used copy. When textbooks are heavily used before you, one, you don't know what kind of a marking system that person was using, and two, you don't know that they were looking for the same things you were looking for, so their markings may throw you off.
Two, your marking system should help you, not hinder you. If your marking system is adding substantial time to your reading practice, try to evolve it or iterate it to make it more streamlined. Again, your annotation process should only add seconds or minutes, not hours.
And finally, if you have a marking system that's different from this one, and it's working for you, and you're getting the results that you want, keep doing it.
First, we're trying to distinguish between different types of information in our reading. In particular, we're trying to zero in on information that matters versus information that doesn't matter, information that we need to spend time remembering and studying versus information that we can overlook or ignore.
The second thing we do is we create a guide through our marking for future study of the material. You can think about your annotation of a text as a kind of trail of breadcrumbs for your future self. When you encounter that material later, you'll have a much clearer path for studying it because you've been there already, and you've left markers for yourself.
Finally, we mark our text because we're trying to make it more manageable in the future, particularly when the information is very complex or when there's a massive amount of it. In order to make it more manageable, we mark it so that we can get a better grasp of it the second time around.
So, when we're thinking about a system for marking our text, we want our system to do three things. We want it to distinguish immediately between different types of information, in other words, to help us figure out what matters and what doesn't. Second, we want it to make our future study of the material as efficient as possible, and thirdly, we want it to make our material, especially complex or abundant material, more manageable in the future. The primary technologies that we use to do this are underlining and highlighting. You do this in middle school, high school, and into college. You highlight things that are important, or you underline them. But today, I want to problematize the idea of underlining and highlighting as a technology for marking our text in the most efficient way.
The problems with highlighting and underlining are manifold. The first problem is that when you highlight or you underline something, you create a binary category. You create two types of information: information that matters and information that doesn't. And even though that's what marking is supposed to do, the material that we encounter in college is going to be more sophisticated than that, so we may need to be able to mark our text in a way to identify all kinds of importance or relative importance, rather than just importance or non-importance. And that's not really possible with highlighting or underlining. We automatically split the text into things that matter and don't, things that we should learn or not learn.
Second, the process itself is time-consuming. If we have to highlight an entire paragraph, it can take 30 seconds or even a minute, adding precious time to our reading process, which is already time-consuming. We also find, especially with dense material or technical material, that we over highlight or over underline. If you have an entire page of text that's highlighted, it doesn't really help you very much.
And finally, splitting information into only two categories doesn't require a ton of critical thought or cognitive effort, and we want our annotations, we want our text marking to require some critical thought for us to help us aid in our comprehension and our retention of the material. Here you see a page of text that's been underlined, and as you can very clearly see, it distinguishes and separates the information out into two categories, literally, categories of underlined and not underlined, but more importantly, information that we should learn versus information that we can ignore.
The same thing happens with highlighting, two categories of information. The information that's missing, critically, from this is how important these different highlighted pieces of information are relative to one another. That's the information that we want our marking system to try to capture. The system I propose here does just that. I call it the one-two-three marking system, a series of strokes next to your text that not only tells you that that text is important, but gives you an immediate indication of how important it is. One stroke being this information will probably be useful, I should try to remember it if I have time; two strokes meaning this is important, I need to learn this; three strokes being this is a key concept or idea, I should understand this fully and be able to talk about it without the use of my notes or my textbook. Another way to think about this:
One, this information is cool, it might strengthen an essay, or it's something I'd like to remember. Two, I should probably learn this material if I have enough time. Three, I need to prioritize this material because it's key, it's important, and I need to understand it fully. I've even added a fourth set of strokes here for information that the professor tells you will be on the exam. You see the system at work here. It's not that much different than underlining or highlighting, except that in a single glance, you can tell not only what's important, but how important the information is relative to each other. You can see, for example, at the very bottom of the page, a very, very important point, probably a point that would be worthy of an exam question or an essay question. And here you see that there's been an additional annotation made.
This system allows for annotations in the margins as well. The benefits of the system are manifold. One, as I've said, it allows you to distinguish quickly and easily information that is important and also how important that information is. It essentially gives you a kind of signal of the amount of importance that a particular piece of information has. Two, the system gives you a sense of how important information is relative to each other at a single glance. You don't have to spend time rereading the material to understand how important it is. Next, the marking system can be practiced easily and allows for easy alteration.
So, if you were to highlight an entire paragraph and then realize that the paragraph wasn't as important as you thought, it would be very difficult to un-highlight that paragraph. But if you were to write three strokes next to a paragraph, and then realize the paragraph isn't that important, you could very easily alter that to a single stroke, alerting you to the fact that it's worthy of remembering, but not of key critical importance. It also, again, allows for easy annotation. You can add additional words next to your strokes to help you identify why a piece of information is important or to register a question that you have.
And finally, when you're annotating your text in this way, you have no more bleeding highlighters through the page, you have no more stray underline strokes crossing out words. It also works really well on print on double-sided paper. A couple of additional things to remember:
One, if you're using heavily marked textbooks already, I would encourage you not to and to try to find a less used copy. When textbooks are heavily used before you, one, you don't know what kind of a marking system that person was using, and two, you don't know that they were looking for the same things you were looking for, so their markings may throw you off.
Two, your marking system should help you, not hinder you. If your marking system is adding substantial time to your reading practice, try to evolve it or iterate it to make it more streamlined. Again, your annotation process should only add seconds or minutes, not hours.
And finally, if you have a marking system that's different from this one, and it's working for you, and you're getting the results that you want, keep doing it.