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Comment by sdoering | Hacker News Reader

> Do not use a marker, a pen or a pencil to highlight or underline text on paper. It is a waste of time, provides false comfort and makes the text unreadable.

What a load of elitist BS (pardon my French). When I was at University we were trained early on to cut the notion of a book being sacred. We should mark, note, create meaning on the pages with pens.

I would not have been able to learn as much in my life if I had not taken this advice seriously.

> In particular, never, ever, learn from the internet, from videos, from games or from a smartphone.

Yeah. Exactly. OK. So I have not learned new things recently about both World Wars through documentaries telling me about findings that I did neither learn in school or at university studying history (among other subjects).

I know. I am just anecdata. But wow. What a view on learning in the quotes book.

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I think the author does have a point though it clearly doesn't apply to everyone. 'Elitist BS' is rather strong. You take a different view but perhaps you've never studied in a part of the world where books are in short supply and one expensive copy is shared. I underlined passages in books in the past and now regret imposing my then partial view via permanent marking. Just a thought but a cataclysmic extinction event on Earth might well either destroy most electronic media or put it beyond general access. Surviving physical books might then become generally sacred once more as they are in many people's present day collections. We're rather too ready to think that the current ease with which we can check out almost any topic will be forever a permanent fixture. There are days when I doubt it.

I have highlighted and marked books and I tended to buy the cheapest copies possible (or buy used books) as I was quite tight on money when I was at university.

What I discovered was that I could trace my understanding and my development towards concepts through the times when I returned to a book that I already had worked with before. My older notes and highlights were often the starting point but with my then current understanding I built on them, contradicted them in parts and sometimes laughed about my former ideas. It made me more humble towards knowledge generation.

To me it were a blessing to have different layers of marks, notes & highlights.

If a cataclysmic extinction event occurred, I doubt a little bit of highlighting or underlining is going to cause significant burden on mankind's ability to relearn things. I do agree though, that if you don't own the book you probably shouldn't mark in it.

> What a load of elitist BS (pardon my French)

The actual French word would be "conneries" (in plural here).

I sort of agree with the book on highlighting and underlining. If you don't jot a note down in the margin, you'll forget your state of mind and have no idea what made some underlined section meaningful. A false comfort.

When I taught LaTeX classes, I would often see students highlighting whole pages of the class notes I passed out. I often said that I should just print them on yellow paper to save them the trouble.

Marking the essentials (or better essentials based on your your current understanding) is different from marking whole sections or pages.

I remember one of my teachers saying he needs some books like Goethes Faust about every 10 years because of new understanding makes him mark different passages (in a different color) than on a previous reading. And after teaching and using the books for about 10 years he needs a fresh page to mark.

Writing notes and comments is great - the text only says highlight or underline!

Even highlighting and marking is essential to help identify the core ideas on a page.

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