Though I would like to say I annotate all my readings, I usually only reserve it for given assignments or richly, dense readings. It is time consuming since I want to be thorough with my notes, but it leaves me better off than just plainly reading. Much of my assignments and readings begin as a blank slate, similar to how each writer, scholar, historian, etc. always start off with a blank page. First run through of the text and I am usually just skimming the lines, maybe only reading the first and last sentence of each paragraph, just to get a brief grasp of what the passage might be about. Personally, since many are taught to write topic and conclusion sentences with specific ideas in mind, they do reveal a lot of information without having to read through the whole paragraph, so reading those specifically while I am skimming is quite helpful. Next, I go in for a second look, now fully immersing myself into the text and annotating as I go along. I organize my work by highlighting key points or claims (along with the evidence in another color) and important or unfamiliar terms in different colors. Usually, I switch up the colors when I move on to another document, so sometimes key terms will be highlighted in blue but in another document key terms is highlighted in red.

Depending on the work, wether it be poems or long essays, my annotations adjust according to how specific my analysis/comprehension of the text is, or what I can pick up from my initial viewing. It can be a colorful mess of highlights and markings, but the most important part are my remarks on the side of the text. Usually, I make a brief summary of what the paragraph or text is about next to each chunck of words. If there are any unfamiliar vocab, I usually write in a quick definition of what the word means after searching it up on Google or the Oxford English Dictionary. Additionally, I write any thoughts or ideas that I think of while I'm reading the passage. A connection here, an opinion there, but I have an initial jot down of thoughts and questions in my initial run through, and then I go back through my nots again after the second run to see if any of my questions or thoughts were answered in the later parts of the passage.

I used to prefer physical copies of texts while annotating, but since most of my readings are now in digital form, it makes annotating more convenient. Plus, it bypasses the pain of marking up any physical copies of a textbook or novel with a pen and sticky notes. There is really nothing special with the way I annotate online documents. I use the programs that are already on my laptop, which is just the downloaded pdf and the editing tools the laptop provides me. If there is not enough space on the text itself to type out my summary or comments (or the text can not be downloaded and anotated upon), then I type them down my comments on a google doc. But, I think the limited space helps prevent excess or unecessary words in my annotations.