Plus, simply making notes or highlighting can actually help you to better remember those key lines. Making note of these passages will help you to find them again quickly and easily. Highlight or underline any quotes that stick with you, perhaps because you find them inspirational, or because you think they represent a turning point in the plot. This will help you to make important connections and identify larger themes as you continue reading.Īgain, even if you aren’t quite sure what these themes or symbols mean, at least you’ll have notes to remind you of what you need to research. If you notice recurring symbols throughout a text, underline or highlight them, even if you’re not quite sure what they mean yet. Your questions can serve as reminders for parts you didn’t understand and want to revisit, or as discussion questions for your book club, work team, or just your own personal journal. These could range from surface level (like, “What does the author mean here?”) to deep, reflective questions (like, “What does this say about society today?”) Jot down any questions that come to mind as you read. Get your highlighter and pen ready to for this treasure hunt through your book.

If you’re not quite sure what you should be looking for when annotating a book, here are a few ideas to get you started in the right direction. By annotating a book, readers examine the text on a deeper level, since they slow down and take the time to notice where they might have questions, identify symbols, or form opinions.

Such notes are usually found in the margins of a text.Īnnotations can be added to note observations, highlight a reader’s favorite passage, insert commentary or analysis, or to raise questions that the reader would like to revisit. You can annotate books (both fiction and nonfiction), poems, articles, and even images. To annotate something means to add notes, which deliver as commentary or explanation of the subject at hand. Although many book lovers might cringe at the thought of writing in the crisp, clean pages of one of their cherished books, annotating a text can actually help to enrich the reading experience.īut before you get started, it’s helpful to know what kind of elements you should be looking for in a text, what you should include in your notes, and how you should complete your annotations for the best results.

Things to annotate with