Annotating a text means to interact with it deliberately to enhance the readers understanding of, recall of, and reaction to the text. It is an active reading strategy that involves adding notes, highlights, or comments to a text. Annotating can be done by hand or by using document software. Some common ways to annotate a text include:

• Highlighting/Underlining: This involves marking key words and phrases or major ideas in the text to make it easier to review material, especially for exams. However, over-reliance on highlighting is unwise.

• Summarizing: This involves writing a systematic summary of the text within the document.

• Identifying key concepts: This involves isolating and organizing important material and identifying key concepts.

• Monitoring your learning: This involves asking yourself questions as you read and making connections to what you already know.

• Expressing your own thoughts and reactions: This involves engaging with ideas and issues directly through comments, questions, associations, or other reactions that occur to you as you read.

Annotating a text can help you understand what is happening in a text after youve read it, note the authors main points, shifts in the message or perspective of the text, key areas of focus, and your own thoughts as you read. It can also help you summarize a text, highlight important pieces of information, and ultimately prepare yourself for discussion and writing prompts that your instructor may give you. Annotating means you are doing the hard work while you read, allowing you to reference your previous work and have a clear jumping-off point for future work.