How I Annotate! +Tips For Aesthetic Annotations
Hello everyone! Annotating is one of my favorite things about reading, and I love seeing everyone's unique annotation styles and sharing my own. Recently, I've been getting a lot of questions about how I annotate, how to get started with annotating, etc. So, today I'm going to be going into depth about how I annotate, my tips & tricks, and my favorite annotating supplies! Let's begin...
How I Annotate
To begin, I'm going to discuss how I personally annotate in my own style. Feel free to take inspiration from it, but make sure to work on developing your own style! Annotating should be a way for you to creatively express yourself and let you shine! That being said, here are the three things I focus on while annotating.
Highlighting & Write Down Thoughts First, I always focus on highlighting and underlining anything that stands out to me or makes me feel something! I also love writing down my commentary on the scene, characters, and any predictions I have! My favorite highlighters are the Mr. Pen highlighters & the Zebra Midliner highlighters from Amazon, which are both linked below!
Dooling & Creative Additions I think this is the cutest and most fun part of annotating, but that's just me. Whenever there's a cute/funny/sad scene or quote, I let my imagination run loose and doodle! I put sparkles around the word, heart frames around some words, and little drawings that maybe coordinate with the book! Don't worry about the doodles being ugly or uneven...because mine are never perfect, and no one's doodles are! It is all in good fun, so don't get too stressed about it :)
Tab Annotations Last and certainly not least, I tab pages/scenes I love, annotations I want to go back to and just if I feel like it! I love tabbing cause it makes it easy to go back through the book and look at your favorite scenes, and it turns out super cute when you finish! I personally love coordinating my tabs to the book cover, but there are tons of things you can do with tabs, like maybe making a tab key that goes with the scene's mood! My favorite tabs are linked below, and I highly recommend these because they're the perfect colors, size, and transparency, plus they don't tear the page if you want to take them off/readjust them!!!!!
Tips For Annotating
And now into the second, and final, part of this post! Below are my favorite tips for cute annotations that you'll have fun doing, and how to make sure annotating is enhancing your reading experience not making it more difficult...
The page is your canvas, treat it like so! Let your imagination run wild and pour your heart out onto the pages. Any thoughts you have, write in the margins. If you feel like sketching out the scene, do that! Don't overthink what's going on the page and just have fun with it! This leads me to my next tip...
Have fun with it! Don't stress about making the most aesthetic annotations, or your reading experience is just going to become draining, and not fun. The best annotations come out of true appreciation of the book and being in the moment of obsessing over a quote, so just let it come naturally.
Use pinterest for inspo! When I was developing and discovering my annotation style, looking through pinterest was super helpful. I actually have a full board about annotating if you want to look at it here: https://www.pinterest.com/shesreading01/annotating/
"Talk" to the text Let yourself get lost in the words, and fall into a "conversation" with the pages. Write things in the margins you might say if you were telling someone about the book, talking to the author, or responding to the characters! It makes for a really fun reading experience!
And that's all of my tips and thoughts on annotating! I love annotating so much, and I hope you are able to take something from this post and apply it to your reading life. Thank you so much for reading and I'll see you in the next post!
Xoxo,
Opal
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Do you annotate? What are your favorite tips for annotating? I'd love to know!
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