Our series on reading is now progressing into the serious, evaluative, and intellectual forms of reading. Before we go further, I want to make a simple suggestion. Don't read a book empty handed. Always read with a pencil in your hand -- not a highlighter, a pencil.
I highlighted my way through college. My books glow yellow under the weight of heavy highlighting. Three problems. One, there is so much highlighting, that it ceases to become helpful. Two, highlighting gives me no clues as to what is being said. It amounts to a bunch of underlining without margin notes ... which does not help much when you pick up the book a year later and re-read the page. Three, you cannot undo highlighting. You may have thought that you were highlighting something really important, only to find out that there was something better in the next paragraph. So you end up highlighting both paragraphs ... which defeats the whole purpose of highlighting.
Put down the highlighter. Pick up a pencil.
There are two reasons to read with a pencil in your hand. One is to use the pencil as a pointer. It helps mitigate "mind drift" -- which is that phenomenon we all experience of reading without really reading. Your mind is all over the place while your eyeballs roll over the words in the paragraph. You get to the end of the paragraph and suddenly realize you have no idea what you just "read". A pointing device helps fight this disease. The second reason to use a pencil is to write with it. Go figure :-). Initially, during your "preview" read (see pre-reading), you should be making simple marks in the margin. Put a check mark next to an important sentence. It will serve as a place holder to come back to. If there is a big chunk of text that is important, then mark the margin with vertical line and tick marks denoting the beginning and end of the section (kind of looks like a giant staple laying on its side pointing its feet at the text). Make these marks lightly with your pencil! You will be coming back to them during your indepth read and making more meaningful notes. You will probably want to erase them and replace them with different marks and / or comments.
When you are reading the chapter at an indepth level (i.e not a pre-read), what marks should you make in the margin? I turn to J.P. Moreland for help. In , he suggests the following system of notational devices to highlight structure.
"First, if an author is offering arguments for his or her thesis, put a "+1" or "+2", and so forth in the margin where each specific argument begins."
If the author makes counterarguments against his or her thesis, Moreland suggests marking those arguments with a "-1" and "-2" and so forth. Further, if the author rebuts those counter arguments, then mark the rebuttal with a "--1" if it is a rebuttal to counter argument "-1", and a "--2" for the rebuttal to "-2" and so forth.
The goal is to keep track of the arguments which comprise the structure of the thesis. These sign posts make it much easier to go back and review later.
Moreland suggests writing pithy sentences in the margin which summarize the main point of the section. These can be 2 to 3 sentences. Once you finish the chapter, you should write a 2 to 3 sentence summary of the chapter back at the start of the chapter. This chapter summary will be a summary of your section summaries.
Moreland also has a notation for a parenthetical style comment. These are "ah hah!" style comments that he makes to himself ... unlike the other margin notes which are summary statements of the author's argument. Moreland writes his comment inside of parentheses marks and puts a N.B. next to it. The N.B. stands for the Latin term nota bene, which means "take note."
Moreland also suggests something quite helpful. If you spot something particularly meaningful that you may want to come back to, make your own index. Turn to one of those blank pages at the front of the book and jot down a phrase and the page number where to go for more information. It will make it easy to find those useful little nuggets a year later.
As far as what to underline in the text with your pencil ... that is entirely up to you. I typically underline meaningful sentences or fragments of sentences ... especially topic statements or conclusions. Don't go crazy underlining too much. I find it difficult to go back and read text that has been heavily marked up ... especially if the underlines are not neatly done.
If any of you have useful tips on note taking while reading, I would love to hear them and pass them along to other readers.
Great thoughts and an important issue--I had forgotten about Moreland's idea of creating your own index. I am often flummuxed when returning to a text I did not write in trying to find a quote or a thesis statement.
I am currently reading a book that is taking me three times as long to read as it should just because of all the note taking. (It is that bad...)
A couple of times I have jotted 'big idea' notes in the Table of Contents under their chapters so I can come back and take note of the ideas I found important or provocative without flipping throught the whole book.
Posted by: Phil S | September 19, 2006 at 00:58