Book highlighters: Do you actually know what you're doing?

Cafe Society
1

Through the years I have encountered many a book that has highlighting in it. Library books, used books, fiction, non-, and text-.

And every time, the highlighting has been applied at seeming random and peters out before the halfway mark.

Currently, I’m trying to read a library copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach and the random highlighting of various phrases is driving me bonkers. There’s no way this highlighting is doing anything for anyone’s reading comprehension, recall, or studying. The person even highlit single words, like “and.”

Is there anyone who is actually highlighting and benefiting from it? Does a highlighter just start operating on its own, thereby explaining the overabundance of random yellow or blue or pink lines?

Are you just doing this to DRIVE ME MAD?

2

My four top suspects are pot, alcohol, inexperience, and None Of Your Business. There are times when someone may be in a state of mind which leads them to believe that the “and” is VITAL to understanding something very important…and maybe, to them, it is. Keep in mind that no one is highlighting anything for YOU. I write notes for myself often which would make no sense whatsoever to anyone else, but they work for me.

Now I’m off to the library to highlight random passages to drive people insane.

3

I once sat next to a girl in class that when through the handouts and highlighted the page numbers on every single page. Not as she was reading the handout to help her know what she had read. She just quickly highlight each page number and put the handout packet in her backpack. It was very strange.

4

Oh - I knew exactly what I was doing.

Muh-ha. Ha-ha.

AH-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!

5

“Eskimo”

6

I’ve noticed this, too. I reckon it’s just one of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” sort of deals. However, I do think that there’s a significant segment of the population that highlights things and takes notes just to seem like they’re doing something, but have no idea what. (I didn’t express that as cleanly as I would like, but hopefully you get the idea). I’ve always wanted to start a thread on Those People Who Seem To Be Focused, But If You Scratch The Surface, They’re Not Really Doing Anything.

7

I highlighted the books I used as references when I was writing my book. The passages I marked were ones that I knew I might want to quote, so later on I could flip back through and find them easily. It was a huge time-saver as I was often cycling between four or five different reference books at the same time.

But, prior to that project, I never highlighted books.

8

I’ve often wondered about highlighting, until a few months ago. The only time I have ever highlighted was this past semester, and only for my liberal arts class.

First time:

We were reading a few chapters of Republic. I had 2 topics I was supposed to be writing about. When I found a passage that applied to what I needed, I used one of 2 colors to highlight the first and last words in the passage that I wanted to revisit later. I then put a like-colored Post-it tab at the top of the page to indicate that I wanted something from that page. I assigned one color to each topic. When I was writing my paper and wanted to refresh my mind as to what Plato had said, I found the appropriate color tab, opened to that page, found the first mark and then read to the second mark. I had started out highlighting the whole passage but there were a couple instances where both topics were covered in the same passage. So, I started just highlighting the first and last words. When one topic started before the other ended, I would have orange, yellow, orange yellow or orange, yellow, yellow, orange - each only 1 word long.

Second time:

Similar system except more complex since I had 6 topics and a 2 hour long documentary transcript that I was supposed to tie in to a paper I had already written. I had 6 colors of highlighters with 6 corresponding Post-it tabs. I made myself a key by taking a piece of note paper and attaching one of each color tab and then writing the topic next to it. After the 3rd or 4th page of the transcript, I had memorized which tabs to use for each topic.

As I read through the transcript, I highlighted the sections that applied to each topic and then put the tab on the side of the page. If the passage was particularly relevant, I’d put an asterisk on the tab. Most pages had 3-4 tabs on the side when I was done. It looked very complex but by the time I was done, I was able to quickly and easily find the comments I wanted to dissect. I had forgotten about this paper until 1 day before it was due. I was able to watch the documentary, highlight the transcript, reference back to the transcript and my original paper, and write my new paper - in 8 hours; two hours to watch the documentary, 1 to try taking notes and only getting 5 pages in, 1 to highlight/tab the entire transcript, 1 to figure out how I wanted my paper to sound and how to not plagiarize myself, and 3 to write/edit it. For the first time, my sister didn’t have any complaints about me mixing my topics in a strange manner (she gives all my papers a final edit before I submit). I got an A.
Once those papers were written and the tabs were removed, the highlighted marks would have looked completely random and pointless. The Plato book had things you mention (like “and” being highlighted for no apparent reason). The transcript had nearly every sentence highlighted - in different colors. No one else would have been able to figure out why I had highlighted like that but to me, it made perfect sense. Hell, even to me now, those marks would be useless. But, at the time, they made perfect sense.

It wasn’t until that class that I was able to understand the value of highlighting. It is necessary to have a system before you start highlighting though. I can’t imagine why that girl was highlighting just the page numbers but maybe she had some plan for them.

I can definitely see someone reading my copy of Republic and wondering what moron highlighted all those random words. The transcript went into the fireplace as soon as I was sure I wouldn’t need it any more.

9

I highlight when I’m too lazy to actually study, it doesn’t help. I’ve taken tests and been unable to arrive at the answer but confident that it was orange in my notes - thanks highlighter!

People who highlight library books are going to burn in a slightly less fiery hell than people who write in the margins. snarl

10

I agree. The only excuse for this is if someone highlighted their own book and then donated it to the library.

11

Even worse are those who painstakingly mark out every swear word in a novel.

12

Sadly, this copy of GEB has started to develop spontaneous margin-writing, too.

13

Yes.

First off, I do not highlight anything unless it is my book that I have paid for.

I use the highlighter in different ways for different topics.

Music - All time signature changes, tempo directions, fermatae and ‘road map sign posts’ (repeat signs, 1st and 2nd endings, DC, DS, al Coda, etc.) get highlighted in yellow. For all highlighting, I write the word over the printed word, so that I get the kinetic sense of writing it just as the composer did. It not only highlights it for the next time I read it, but writing it helps me to remember it. As I study it, I will trace the words with my finger to reinforce that kinetic memory.

All dynamic markings get highlighted in blue.

All stylistic markings (staccato, marcato, accents, parlando, legato, etc. - anything that tells you how to sing or play a note.) get highlighed in orange.

I prefer to mark my part in scores by highlighting the beginnings and ends of staves in green. For scores where I have learned different roles, purple and pink are the other two colours.
French and Italian - In texts I’m studying, all feminine nouns are highlighted in pink, all masculine nouns in blue. They are then copied out in pencil in the upper left and upper right margins, along with anything unusual about their plurals. In Italian, I will often mark double consonants in purple.

German and Russian - In texts I’m studying, all feminine nouns are highlighted in pink, all masculine nouns in blue and all neuter nouns in green. They are then copied out in pencil in the upper left, upper right and bottom centre margins, along with their genitive singular and plural endings.

Like you, there’s little on this earth that pisses me off more than people who write (in pen or in pencil) in library books, unless it’s those people who highlight random things in library books.

14

People mark out swear words? What the [del]FUCK[/del]?

I admit to enjoying margin notes in one instance.

My Chaucer text was in the original Middle English which I still can’t read. Some cheeky bastard went through and made helpful notes like, “This is the part where he’s buttfucking her.”

15

I’ve read very complex sentences (or when I was very tired, much less complex sentences) where I would lose track of the relationship between clauses. Highlighting and won’t help me remember anything later, but it might help me parse the sentence as I’m reading it.

Keep in mind also that the type of person who marks up a library book is not the sort to have the most polished and thoughtful study habits. They might have comprehension problems (like not comprehending "DON’T WRITE IN LIBRARY BOOKS!) or they might have something like schizotypal personality disorder. Remember the scenes in A Beautiful Mind where Nash would circle random words in the newspaper, thinking he saw a pattern in them? There are people who are really like that. Used to be that the local paper in my favorite coffee shop would always be marked up just like that when I got there. The staff confirmed that there was one customer who would get there early in the morning and mark the paper carefully each day, and that he wasn’t quite right.

16

I tried highlighting when I first started going to college. It was what everyone else was doing, so I did it too. Then I went back to books I had read the previous semester and found that not only was the highlighting completely meaningless it also distracted me when reading making me have to slow down to comprehend the section.

It was annoying. I stopped highlighting after that. I had a good memory in college anyway and I discovered the joys of reader response criticism in my literature papers. I could turn in papers that had no references outside the work I was writing on and my professors gave me As. No highlighters or trips to the library for research necessary. (State University obviously.)

17

Years before I got to college, people would say that used textbooks are great because the person before you already highlighted and underlined the important passages. When I got to college, I discovered that the person who had the book before me was invariably a moron. Some places were highlighted and underlined in ink, with ink arrows to facile marginal observations like “Symbolism”. Sometimes nearly the entire page would be highlighted. And of course highlighting loses its lustre after a while, becoming an ugly drab orange or yellow with age.

18

When studying, I highlight items that I need to memorize that have a significant chance of being on a test. I then write notes from the highlighted portions and study my notes. For me, it is the ideal way to memorize things.

However, it seems that a large percentage of the people I studied with or worked with back in university and high school understood that highlighting was a way to study but not how to do so. What ended up happening was they would highlight everything or in seemingly random patterns. Based on my experience, intelligence was the determining factor. Those who were smart enough to pick out important information, highlight important information. Those who were not (or were struggling) do not.

This is why I would spend hours in the used bookstore examining any text I was buying to ensure that nothing was highlighted.

19

I must be a freak, I used 5x7 cards.
Top line - bibliography info, prepping for the foot or end notes/bibliography and a card number so I could cross reference it to a different card if needed.

notes to myself about the text i want to use, and mention of exactly what text I wanted to use. line numbers, paragraph indicators, verses or formulas, whatever format it took. It was handy because I could write down why I needed to reference a different book and point to the card number that I was referring to.

Once done, I had essentially my bibliography or other notes information at hand, and a bit of why I wanted that specific quote and the indicators of the quote I wanted to use so all I had to do was flip open the book and copy it exactly. I would shuffle the cards into order, and experiment with order if it seemed that the info needed to be presented in a different order.

20

I was going to start a thread in GQ to see if anyone has a method for removing highlighting from a book without damaging the text. Googling tells me there’s no hope, but I thought maybe, just maybe, some SD librarian has something.

I’ve really come to hate highlighting in text books. I was taught to do it in high school, maybe even a teacher suggested it. And it may have come in handy, to help me focus. And maybe, in literature, to highlight important points to memorize for an exam essay question. Fine.

But when you get to a technical textbook – math, analytical chemistry, organic synthesis – there is no filler. Every line is a statement, a definition, or an application of a collection of concepts. And the formulas? Those are highlighted for you, with white space:

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So you don’t need to highlight. But I did it, dutifully. I didn’t even notice I was highlighting the entire paragraph o every page of the whole freaking book. Colors of highlighters switch as one runs dry, and you have to buy another one.

I’ve acquired one of the gold standard textbooks for analytical chemistry, that someone was throwing out at work. I’m glad to have it, but I have to sublimate my internal whining as I read it. Because, why, oh why, did someone highlight the entire page after page after page.

But anyway, hey, free textbook, so I really have no reason to complain.

Summary: Highlighting. A crutch. And a dumb one. Don’t teach it to your kids. Read the text, and write out the whole summary for yourself, on a separate paper.

Course, a highlighter comes in handy when reviewing a table of numbers for outliers, or proofreading text. I’m not trying to put the fluorescent ink people out of business here, :slight_smile: