Annotation
Ramón C Sunico
I wrote this some time ago while designing Rolando S Tinio’s posthumous
anthology of his collected poems. While rereading some of his poems, I
was reminded of one of his classes on the essay. He spent the first week
teaching his class how to write on their books (gasp!). He was of course
talking about annotation, but he preferred to refer to it using a sexier word,
marginalia (rhymes with Saturnalia).
It’s now the first day of my school’s first ever fully online semester. I still
don’t have a complete class list and with that, the email addresses of my, so
far, de-facto nonexistent students. Have found, thanks to a colleague in the
Humanities/IS Department a Harvard site that allows you to annotate pdfs
online, so I’m dusting off this old essay to try out on my class—when I get
their email addresses.
For Rolando S Tinio
TO
o annotate is to read with your “pen.”
ne could call it the opposite of skimming.
When you skim you give the text a quick
look. Your eyes move quickly over a page
(pace differs with every reader and occasion).
Sometimes, you give the text several passes. The first pass gives
you a general sense of the language used. Subheads can give you
a sense of what each section contains. In a second pass, usually
slower, you can pick out a few paragraphs. The first and last
paragraphs are favorites. A paragraph or 2 per section give you a
vague sense of where the text is going. Skimming is both active
(you control the pace your eyes move) and passive (you hope
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Annotation • Sunico
something in the text catches your eye.) If you’re good, you get a
general sense of the argument or plot, the voice, the setting.
None of these really help with a good pop-up quiz though.
Designed to test how thoroughly you have read the text, it picks
out details missed by skimming, or asks about the organization
and structure of a complete argument or scene.
Skimming is also good for newspapers and magazines. Again
we let our eyes play over a broad sheet of paper or a screen,
looking for a headline or photo to catch our eye. Then we stop
skimming and focus on that one piece, reading more carefully
this time.
I bring these up to show you that we read at different
speeds—even in the space of one book. Why would anyone
want to speedread a delightful novel? Have you caught yourself
resisting the urge to read faster because you don’t want the book
to end?
Have you ever reread a passage because it speaks a truth
so unexpected and powerful you want to experience reading it
again?
But not all books are written for pleasure. There’s another
reason we read slow: to understand. There are texts that are
difficult, but necessary—think of having to find an error in a
program, to master an important formula in calculus, to take
the right steps to assemble some furniture, to make sense of a
contract, a classic, a serious article on religion or society or the
meaning of college in a dying world.
Annotation is a technique to make you read slowly.
Carefully. It offers you the tools to master the text.
To master the text, you touch it.
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Annotation • Sunico
You can highlight, underscore with straight lines and
squiggly lines and double red lines.
You can disagree or agree or remind yourself to read
another book. You can log several possible meanings of a
sentence. You can write your own ideas down.
You draw question marks and stars.
When you annotate, you get to read each word in the
text and see how it relates to other words to form a sentence,
a proposition, a challenge, a question. You see the how these
relate to each other to form a paragraph, an assumption, a scene
and from there a chapter, an argument, a finished, polished story.
It’s a good tool during a time when people don’t think things
through, because to annotate is to read thoughtfully.
The price paid is time; the prize won is a deeper knowing.
Try it then. In this brave, new world you can annotate
without ruining the paper pages of your favorite book.
Check out a paragraph:
Ask which sentence in it summarizes its main thought.
Ask which turn of phrase caught your attention.
Which one do you not understand?
Which words do you need to look up?
Which sentences do you agree with? Which not?
And finally, in your own sentence, what do you think the
paragraph says?
Welcome to your first annotation.
Ramón C Sunico©2018. All rights reserved.
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