How to Make a Book Annotation Key

Keep the key shorter than you want

Six to eight marks is enough for a year of reading. A key of twenty symbols needs its own key, and you will not stop mid-chapter to consult it. If you cannot say the list aloud from memory, cut it.

Write it on a card and keep the card in the front of the book, or on the first page of the notebook that travels with that book. A legend that lives in a notes app you never open during reading is not a legend. The page on annotating without writing in the book is the version for library copies and anything you must return clean.

Symbols that earn a place

Start from jobs, not from stationery. A mark should answer a question you will actually ask later: where is the sentence I might quote, where did I get lost, where do I disagree.

A workable set looks like this. You do not have to adopt all of it.

• Single underline: a sentence you might want again.
• Double underline: a sentence you would copy out.
• Vertical line in the margin: the whole paragraph, not one clause inside it.
• Circle: a word to look up, or a name you will otherwise forget.
• Asterisk: come back. A question for later, or a thing to try.
• Question mark: you do not understand it yet. Leave the muddle visible.
• A wavy line or a square bracket: you disagree. Add two or three words on why, or the mark is only a mood.

Give each colour a job

Colour is optional. If you use it, give each colour one job and write that job on the card. A single colour that means “I liked this” will cover half the page by chapter four.

One scheme that stays readable: yellow for the move of the plot or the step in the argument, pink for a line worth copying, blue for an image or a word that keeps returning, green for something to check before you repeat it. Swap the colours if you already own a different set of pens. The point is that yellow means the same thing on Tuesday and in November.

Highlighter soaks through thin paper. Draw one short line on a blank page at the back of the book before you mark a chapter. If the next leaf shows the colour, switch to a pencil underline or to a tab on the edge.

Tab colours belong to the same legend

A sticky tab sits on the edge of the page. It does not replace the mark next to the sentence, and a blank tab is only a bookmark with a colour. Write two or three words on it: “mother lies”, “definition”, “the salary”.

Use the same colours as the pens, so yellow on the edge and yellow on the page are one idea. Place the tab so you can see it when the book is shut, and so it does not cover the line you meant to find. When the book is not yours, tabs and notes do the whole job. That method is written out in the guide to annotating without writing in the book.

An example key for fiction

Fiction wants marks for pattern and for the moment your mind changes, not for “themes” you will invent at the end.

• Underline: a sentence whose shape you want to remember.
• Margin line: a turn in the scene.
• Circle: a repeated image. The window, the meal, the hands.
• Asterisk: a line you might quote when you talk about the book.
• Question mark: a motive you do not believe yet.
• Pink tab on the edge: the page where you changed your mind about a character.

An example key for study

A set text or a textbook chapter has a smaller list of jobs. Mark those, and leave the rest of the page clean. “Beautiful sentence” is a weak exam mark unless the question is about style.

• Underline: a definition you must be able to say in your own words.
• Double underline: a line you might use in an essay.
• Margin line: an example that makes the definition concrete.
• Bracket: evidence, kept separate from the claim it supports.
• Asterisk: a comparison with another chapter or another book.
• Question mark: a point to ask someone who has read it more than once.

An example key for non-fiction

Read for the claim, the support, and the thing you might do differently on Monday. A memoir and a practical book can share this key. A novel should not.

• Underline: the claim, in the author’s words.
• Margin line: the evidence, or the story told in support of the claim.
• Circle: a method you could copy.
• Asterisk: a thing to try this week. If you will not try it, do not asterisk it.
• Bracket: you disagree. Write the objection in the margin in a few words.
• Green, pen or tab: a fact to check before you repeat it to anyone else.

Use the same words in the app

BookQuotes keeps a custom marking vocabulary. It starts with a short list you can rename: underline, double underline, margin line, highlight, bracket, margin note, circle, asterisk, and question mark. Change the name, describe what the mark looks like on the page, and write what you mean by it. The card in the front of the book and the list in the app should use the same words. If the card says a wavy line means “I disagree”, the app should say that too.

On capture the app can detect the page number. You still check it. Collections and tags come after the key, when the same idea shows up in more than one book. They are not a second legend of forty labels. The scan guide covers how to photograph the page so the words can be checked. BookQuotes does not import Kindle highlights.