Annotations are the marks — underlines, highlights, and comments — you make directly on the page as you read. Annotating can be used to record immediate reactions and questions, outline and summarize main points, and evaluate and relate the reading to other ideas, readings, and points of view. Annotating can be done on paper with a pencil, pen, or highlighter, or on-screen by using your software’s highlighting and commenting functions (or simply by typing annotations into the text using a different color or font).

Your annotations can take many forms, such as the following:

Most readers annotate in layers, adding further annotations on second and third readings. Annotations can be light or heavy, depending on your purpose and the difficulty of the material. Your purpose for reading also determines how you use your annotations.

The following selection, excerpted from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” illustrates some of the ways you can annotate as you read. Add your own annotations, if you like.