Highlighting notes 101

WHEN you’re reading a book or preparing study notes for exam cramming, highlighting can be beneficial. Here are some tips to make the most of your highlighting.

Have a hard copy of the notes

Print your lecturer’s notes and take them into class with you. Whenever he says, “This is important”, whip out the highlighter and mark the section indicated. It is bound to be essential for an assignment or come up in the final test.

If you’re a book lover who thinks highlighting the written work is a desecration, photocopy the pages covered in each lecture and mark those up.

Colour code

When marking up notes, use a yellow highlighter for important parts as that is the most attention-attracting colour.

Use light colours such as orange, pale blue, pink and green to distinguish stuff you have to look into, or those that belong to a specific category of information in your course or are useful for assignments.

Avoid dark colours

Darker blues, greens and purples are attractive, but they also obscure text. If you’re reading in a well-lit area, it’s not a problem. But when you’re tired, you should not strain your eyes to see what’s important.

Don’t go overboard

At some point, it will seem that everything in the notes is important. Resist the temptation to highlight whole paragraphs and pages.

The idea of highlighting is to identify key phrases and concepts. They should trigger your memory so that you remember what’s written around those terms. As a rule of thumb, you should be highlighting roughly 10% to 20% of any text.