5 Making notes
5.1 Underlining and highlighting
As I read Collee’s article I made a lot of marks with a biro. I could just as well have used a highlighting pen. Sometimes, I use several colours of pen to mark for different purposes – yellow for general interest, pink for points relevant to what I’m working on, and so on. Figure 2.2 shows what paragraph 3 of the Collee article looked like after I’d worked on it.
Figure 2.2 A paragraph of the Collee article, annotated for emphasis The term ‘food poisoning’ is a
misnomer. A range of
micro-organisms, including viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoa, can cause such infections. The diseases that these organisms cause may arise as a result of two possible mechanisms. They may be true infections, in which the microbe gains access to the human body and multiplies within it; or they may occur when a microbe multiplies in the food, producing a toxin, which poisons the person who eats the food.
So a better term is ‘food-borne infections and intoxications’.
A
ctivity Break Look carefully at my underlining. Compare it with yours, if you did any. Why do you think I underlined those words? Why did I use double underlining in places? (This was the only paragraph in which I used double underlining.) What are the numbers in the margin for? Why did I put boxes around two words?I always try to underline words in a way that allows me to pick up the gist of the argument when I come back to the text by just reading those words. (Try reading out the words I underlined. Does it make sense to you?)
What about the double underlining? Collee seemed to be making some important general points in this paragraph, setting out the basis for his whole analysis, so I did some double underlining to try to highlight the main distinctions I thought he was making. First, I double underlined ‘misnomer’, because the whole paragraph is about ‘food poisoning’ being a misleading term. I then double underlined ‘micro-organisms’, because these are what Collee identifies as the cause of food poisoning, and because the term covers all the specific types of food poisoning described in the article. I double underlined ‘two’ and ‘mechanisms’, because these words seemed to
encapsulate a key distinction. (I was signalling to myself to look out for the two mechanisms in what follows.) I then numbered the two mechanisms as I came to them. I double underlined ‘infections’ and ‘body’ as the key words for the first mechanism. I also double underlined the ‘or’, because it signals that Collee is shifting to the second mechanism. I then picked out ‘food’ and
‘toxin’ as the key words for the second mechanism, but as ‘toxin’ was already in bold type, I just double underlined ‘food’. Finally, I put boxes around
‘infections’ and ‘intoxications’, because I anticipated that these might be two key categories used throughout the rest of the article. (In the event, they were not really mentioned again.) I put far fewer marks on the rest of the article, because it did not seem so densely argued.
This might seem like a lot of fuss to make about a bit of underlining – something that I did quickly, without a lot of thought at the time. After all, there are lots of other ways of underlining this paragraph, ways that might be just as good, or better. However, I wanted to demonstrate that the humble activity of underlining can be very strategic. It can be used to convey a lot of information. What is more, in the process of doing the underlining, I was making myself think about the text instead of just skimming over it. I was making myself get to grips with the key distinctions Collee was making.
You probably had excellent reasons for marking quite different words. It depends what your mind focuses on as you read. My markings are simply offered as a stimulus to set you thinking about:
X how much underlining you do X what you choose to underline.
The value of highlighting and underlining
Do you feel like a vandal when you write on a book? I suppose it depends on whether it’s your book. If it is your book, marking the text as you read is a very valuable way of:
X focusing your attention on the text
X making you pick out and think about the main ideas
X leaving a trace on the page of the sense you have made of the text.
When you come back to a marked-up text, you can tune in very quickly to the thinking you did on first reading it.
Marking the text is a way of modestly increasing your time investment as you read and getting a much increased pay-off – in terms of both what you understand at the time and what you can remember later.
Notes and bookmarks
Some people write notes in the margins as an alternative to underlining or highlighting. A quick diagram can be a good way of summarizing something.
Or, if you don’t want to write on the text itself, you can use those ‘yellow stickies’, which don’t damage the page, and can be placed sticking out to serve as bookmarks at the same time. Or you could use a piece of card both as a bookmark and as a place to write formulas or other reference information.
Figure 2.3 Using sticky notes as bookmarks
If you scan back over material you have read, but haven’t marked or
underlined, you may find that very little has stuck in your mind. In contrast, it boosts your morale tremendously to see familiar markings, offering you direct evidence of the attention you have already given to the text, and leading you straight to the key points.
Tues. evening starts here!
Read this far by Weds.
End of chap.
Example for assignment