Annotating your textbooks or other study materials is a great way to remember what’s in them: it forces you to read critically and pay attention. Unfortunately, if you don’t do it right, you won’t get as many benefits as you should. Here are the right (and wrong) ways to annotate.
📖 How to Annotate Books Like a Pro ✍🏻 Get more out of your reading experience with these tips + tricks!
In the same way that you color-code your notes, you should color-code your notes. A simple black pen is fine for writing in the margins, but by switching up the colors of your pen or highlighter, you can quickly identify different elements of your text. It can be as simple as using a red pen to underline concepts you don’t understand and want to study more deeply later, or as complex as using a yellow highlighter for vocabulary, a pink one for overarching themes, an orange one for evidence, etc.
Assigning each color a meaning and sticking to it will help you remember the information better and make repeating it a lot easier.
Instead of underlining everything that’s notable, mix in symbols. The University of North Carolina Learning Center recommends using symbols that are universal and familiar to you, like a question mark if something’s confusing you or an exclamation point if you know something will be on the test.
