Dauphinee
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How to Annotate Text
As part of any science class you will be required to read about
scientific topics, either as journal articles, news sources, and even
charts and graphs. One strategy for reading articles or textbooks is
to ANNOTATE. Think for a moment about what that word
means. It means to add notes (an-NOTE-tate) to text that you are
reading, to offer explanation, comments or opinions to the author's
words. Annotation takes practice, and the better you are at it, the
better you will be at reading complicated articles.
Learn to Annotate!
1. Read the first paragraph, somewhere there (or possibly in the 2nd paragraph) should be a BIG
IDEA about what the article is going to be about, this shouldn't be more than a phrase or a
sentence. In composition class, this is probably called the author's thesis. Underline or highlight
the thesis statement and annotate it with "THESIS"
2. Underline topic sentences or phrases that express the main idea for that paragraph or section.
You should rarely underline more than 5 words, though for large paragraphs or blocks of text,
you can use brackets. Write in the margin next to these underlines a summary of the paragraph or
the idea being expressed
3. Connect related ideas by drawing arrows from one idea to another, annotate those arrows with
a phrase about how they are connected.
4. If you encounter an idea, word, or phrase you don't understand, circle it and put a question
mark (?) in the margin that indicates an area of confusion, write the question in the margin.
5. Anytime the author makes a statement that you can connect with on a PERSONAL level,
annotate in the margins a summary of how this connects to you.
6. Place a box around any term or phrase that emphasizes scientific language. These could be
words you are not familiar with, define those words in the margins.
Annotation Tips
When highlighting or marking text, be sure to only mark the points you think are most important
or have questions about. Sometimes, just a word or phrase is all you need to remember what is
important in that paragraph. When you underline or circle text, use the margins to add a thought
or personal detail.
Dauphinee
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Things to mark:
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Document thesis, or topic sentences within paragraphs
Words you don’t know, technical words
Facts and evidence that are important to the text
Important quotations that show the meaning or theme of a text
Phrases that you can relate to personally
Create your code
To make annotating easy and fast, come up with a code that you understand to show why you
marked something. Here are some that I use:
? – what does this mean? (Could be used for a specific word or a whole paragraph)
! – I love this!
* - This is important.
Emoticons - you can use these to express various emotions regarding the text
Questions and comments
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While reading, you’ll want to record questions and comments in the margins of the text.
Questions: any questions you have about the text that you want to ask or google?
Comments: connections you have or thoughts you have about what is happening, explain
why the text is important, shocking, or critical to the theme
Summaries: a short sentence or phrase after a paragraph or section
To summarize how you will annotate text:
1. Identify the BIG IDEA
2. Underline topic sentences or main ideas
3. Connect ideas with arrows
4. Ask questions
5. Add personal notes
6. Define technical words
Don't be intimidated, like many skills, annotating takes practice. Remember that the main goal
for doing this is to give you a strategy for reading text that may be more complicated and
technical than what you are used to.