I've been thinking about annotating my books recently. For as long as I can remember, I've had an intense desire to keep them pristine. Even though I know that this is not what engaged readers do, the compulsion to preserve their pages tends to override all rational argument. I've made attempts here and there to mark up particularly challenging reads--abusing House of Leaves with a highlighter, jotting definitions in the margins of Le mythe de Sisyphe... yet I was unable to sustain these exercises, and they were ultimately unsatisfying.
Part of the problem came from the fact that I knew I was doing something out of the ordinary, that there was no way I would maintain it as a habit with other books. But a larger portion came as a consequence of the fact that I had no set system of annotating. Whenever I found myself with the wrong implement, underlining stood in for highlighting or vice-versa. This thwarted any attempt to use the two to denote different things, and it made the pages extremely ugly. Nor could I decide, for written notes, whether to use pen or pencil. And finally, what convention was I to use to mark an important passage as opposed to one I didn't fully understand? I went through underlining, highlighting, bracketing, squiggly lining, lines in the margins, and occasionally circling, producing no coherent system and making an even larger mess of my pages. This was, of course, the reason I wanted to avoid marking in my books in the first place.
I now, however, acknowledge that something needs to be done. The revelation came to me a couple days ago when I began reading excerpts of Kant's Critique of Judgment. For me, the difficulty of this text necessitates the marking of key passages and the insertion of comments in the margins. With this resolution to annotate has come an equal resolve to discover an ideal system of annotation--and here we come to the intent of this post. I have developed a few conventions, but I'd like to hear anything that you find useful while annotating. Thus far, I:
1. Use a single vertical line in the outer margin, as close as possible to the body of the text, to mark a significant sentence or passage. Sometimes I add little bracket ends, pointing into the text, to the top and bottom of the line, but this is not strictly necessary. Taken by itself, this denotes that I simply think a passage is important. Written notes may clarify that this is something I disagree with or do not understand, etc., or they may contain an attempt to summarize the passage in my own words.
2. Try to write marginalia at a 45-degree angle, striking a balance between length and ease of access.
3. Underline short passages that seem tremendously important. To be honest, I've only done this a couple times, and I'm not sure that I should continue. The appeal of tactic 1 is that it doesn't disfigure the body of the text and it saves graphite/ ink. What must be decided is whether or not there truly exists such passages whose notability so supersedes that of other important passages that they require their own notation.
I have rejected the highlighter as an appropriate means for dealing with the text, and while I think that I fine-tipped pen (rollerball, or something similar) would be ideal, I am at this point using a pencil. I don't want to commit to ink until my technique is perfected.
It's worth noting that annotating fiction will likely require an added set of conventions. Fiction almost always invites multiple interpretations, and uses a larger repertoire of devices than nonfiction or philosophy to present its material. Hence, I invite you to share your ideas about annotating fiction as well as annotating in general, if you have any.
This may be, by far, the dorkiest post that Blogger has ever known.
[2/16/08 - edited, finally, for style and clarity]
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3 comments:
I disagree with the last statement you've made. I am very sure there are dorkier.
Annotating is actually pretty serious business, in my opinion. I share many of the same feelings as you do regarding the visuals of the page... I don't like them to be marked and messy. At times it can even seriously hinder my reading, as it may also hinder yours. (Not to mention the difficulty of making sense of messy notes.) I'll try to offer the little bit I know about this.
1. I always, always use a pencil when making notes. Even if you have your system down perfectly, there's always room for an unexpected mistake here or there. You may want to change a note made at an earlier point while reviewing it, or you may need to go back and rehash some marks made about important parts (especially in fiction, where various passages of importance can change in retrospect, depending on the later developments of the plot.) It's also kind of nice to just scribble a couple words down if you're reading at a quick pace and then go back to replace them as you see fit later. Erasers come in handy for this. It works best for me. I don't think I'll ever make a full commitment to ink.
2. From what I know about lines as an art major, I can conclude that your vertical lines made in the margin by important passages are a good thing. Vertical lines are very stimulating to the human eye. They draw you in. Horizontal lines do not. I always steer away from underlining, most likely because of this. I also feel that lines drawn in between lines of text interrupt the flow of the page. They're incredibly annoying to me. This, in my opinion, also applies to other various marks made in the actual lines of text such as circles, arrows, boxes, et cetera. I generally like to stick to the margins.
3. I like to create my own footnotes sometimes.
4. Do you use both margins for writing notes? Many people like to stick to the right, but the left if just as nice, depending on how much space you have between the binding and the text. I think your 45 degree angle rule for writing is good. I do the same.
5. Personally, if I see an entire passage of importance, I use a very long bracket to mark it in the right margin (from the beginning of the important passage to the end). If the passage requires a note, I draw a small dash from this bracket, generally near the top of it, and start the note-taking from there.
6. If I see a sentence within a passage that needs to be marked as important, I simply bracket the sentence and put a small dash in the left margin at the line where the sentence starts. If the sentence requires a note, the note can start where the dash is. I keep notes about long passages on the right and notes about short passages or sentences on the left. That way, if you ever find an important sentence within an important long passage, your notes won't run into each other.
7. That's about all that comes to mind at the moment. I always avoid hi-lighting because I can't ever bring myself to mark the pages with horribly painful bright colors that can't be erased.
8. I had no idea I actually put this much thought into my annotation. I am slightly proud of myself while embarrassed at the same time. I wish you luck and much good note-taking.
oh, and i forgot. Le mythe de Sisyphe is wonderful. I've only read an excerpt in english, but from what I read it's incredible. It might have had a fairly important impact on the way I live my life when I think about it.
Camus is probably my #1 favorite author at this time.
1. I've been sticking to pencil, but I feel that if one is able to muster a certain clarity of thought while reading (something I only experience rarely), a pen would be better. Pencil is so impermanent, so smudgy after a while. If one of the goals of annotation is to aid rereading (the other being to help one think during the current reading, that makes two, am I leaving any out?), then one would want something that will still look decent in 20 years. Of course, annotations in pen must be committed with the utmost gravity, but if this is done, then even erroneous observations should carry a certain charm. Leaving a history of one's reading, even if it turns out to be naive, could be nice. And finally, there's always the option of not annotating in ink until one's second or third go through--because truly reading something involves rereading, wouldn't you agree?
2. I have (since my original post) developed a way to add a second order of emphasis to a passage without resorting to underlining. One simply doubles the vertical line in a bracket by drawing another parallel to it. It looks nice, like the end of a line of music.
3. Yes, footnotes are nice, especially in highly referential works. Though if they're very dense, one quickly runs out of room.
4. I use the outer margins.
6. I like your right/ left convention very much (it's quite clever), but I'd be afraid of breaking the spine in trying to get to the inside.
I agree that Camus is great. I've actually only read The Stranger in English and part of Le mythe de Sisyphe in French (so far), but I plan on returning to him sometime. Is there anything else essential that I should see?
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