S1:P1 - Reading for future you: Highlighting in two colors

How to use two highlighter colors to take better, more useful, and easily searchable notes in books, essays or articles – and a hotlist of the tools I currently use. — Season 1, Post 1

When I first ask my students about the notes they take while reading, they unanimously describe the number of annotations they‘ve made. This has been true for high school students and undergrads. The quality of their annotations has yet to wriggle into their initial conversations on reading.

Most of my students – focused as they are on taking notes that look impressive to grumpy teachers’ eyes – rarely use their notes again. I often find them re-reading texts wholesale weeks later before tests or projects come due. Likely because their notes are taken for their teachers, not for future them.

Most educators don’t share how, when, and for what purposes they take reading notes. Anecdotally, the only discussions I’ve had about how to take notes have been on social media. As I ooh and ahh at the beautiful notes that folks who are far more artistically-inclined than me post on Instagram and on their blogs, I find myself asking: how often do these folks return to their notes?

Aesthetics are important. Gorgeous notes make you want to spend time with your thoughts and return to your books. But process is queen. I suggest that reading notes should also be useful to you weeks or months after you read.

Taking notes for future you

One crucial aspect of annotating for future you is to separate out the author’s intended key points from the points you find most interesting or important.

Your aim is to recreate the author’s main points in a way that the author would agree is accurate. They should want to high five you afterwards for “getting it.”

Useful highlights leave breadcrumb trails you can follow back through a text you’ve read. Further, leaving two trails of breadcrumbs allows future you to review a text accurately. One trail ends in the author’s headspace. Another ends in your own ideas. You want to get back to both of these interpretations later.

The most enjoyable way I’ve found to blaze these two trails is to highlight passages in two colors.

Two color method

Summary color. Grey is for the author’s headspace. I use grey highlighter and a pencil for notes on the author’s key points, as they would prioritize their own ideas. I spend most of my reading time with a pencil or a grey Zebra Mildliner in hand.

Reaction color. I use an accent color to highlight passages in a book that I find particularly useful for my own research, or that I find personally interesting or shocking. These passages are most often the parts of a text that I end up citing in my own work.

And importantly, future me will make better writing decisions if he can see which pages struck me as important back when I was first reading the book. Annotating in two colors aims to make your future writing easier.

Interested enough to want to read a citation

Using both colors

Recreate the outline while reading. Focus first on finding the author’s intended argument. Spend most of your reading time with a grey highlighter or pencil in your hand (or whatever color you’ve chosen to note the author’s headspace). Pencil first. Then grey highlighter.

Note any passages which you guess might have been a major bullet in the author’s own outline. I like a quick vertical line down the margin for this task. A line is enough of a note to emphasize the sentence quickly without losing track of the author’s lesson for you. You want to minimize the amount of time you spent writing and not engaging with the author’s words.

Write your best guess for what the author’s bullet point might have been in the margin. Work section by section — or heading by heading. If a line doesn’t seem to a main idea upon second-look, then leave it be.

Next, scan through the passages you’ve noted in pencil. Highlight those sentences you believe, now that you’re seeing them a second time, would have been in the author’s own outline. Your goal is to use your summary highlight color to recreate the outline the author used to write their text.

Circles and grey highlights show me the author’s main lessons without needing to re-read the whole page

Some passages are going to stand out to you as particularly interesting or powerful as you read to recreate the author’s outline. An artsy phrasing. An example that makes you think “wow!” A sentence that reminds you of some other text you’ve read, or perhaps another text you’ve written.

Highlight these passages in your accent color. Make a quick note of what you’re thinking in the margin. Your accent highlights are about you and your interests.

Accent notes can even highlight connections I think I’m seeing as I read

There may be many notes on one page, or just one in an entire chapter. Quality over quantity.

While reviewing. With two colors of highlighter, searching your notes for useful passages is an easy process – even months afterward.

When I go back to reference a book or article, I start with the pages that struck me – which are now highlighted with a pretty accent color and so are easy to find while flipping pages. My feelings are already separated from the author’s intended focus, because of how I highlighted. So accurately citing the author’s argument is a straightforward project.

When I find a passage or point that fits my current needs, I confirm my thinking about the passage against what the author wanted to say, which is already highlighted more subtly in grey. Referencing authors in good faith is what all the cool people do.

Avoiding the opinion trap

A common mistake students make is forming their opinions about a book chapter as quickly as they can. They then hunt through the text for passages that, out of context, confirm their opinions are “right.” This results in highlighting that is all one color — what we would use our accent color to mark.

One warning sign that you’ve fallen into the opinion trap is when you find yourself hunting for a passage that seems to support what you are thinking without regard for the actual context of that passage; or, what point the author wanted to make. You always want the passage you reference and the author’s intended point to reflect one another – especially where you disagree with the author’s intended point.

Future you needs help to avoid the opinion trap. Highlighting in two colors is a direct path out of the trap. A lit trail out of the dark, cavernous echo chamber.

Pencils and highlighters of choice

I prefer to write margin notes in pencil.

Graphite erases. Graphite is a neutral color. It never feathers, even on the crappy paper books are often printed on. And, crucially, pencils can write at almost any angle.

I’ve been using pencils while reading for so long that, now, picking a pencil up signals to my subconscious that we are about to conquer some reading.

I use pens for just about everything else. But for noting passages I want to highlight, and for annotating already-highlighted passages, the wood pencil is hands-down my go-to tool.

Mildliner highlighters have wonderful colors and offer two writing tips: one chiseled and a second pointed. These are my favorite, not least because of the mellow grey option. And I’ve yet to meet a paper they bleed on.

My favorite annotation tools of the moment are:

Blackwing, with point guard — solid all-purpose wood pencil
Mildliner Mild Gray — highlights without distraction
Mildliner Mild Blue — my go to accent color of late. No rational reason why
Dux sharpener — sharp blade in a compact metal holder
Ramekin — for holding, and then easily disposing of, pencil shavings