Active Reading and Annotating Texts
The primary step in reading actively texts of any kind is annotation. Annotating is the composition and entry of a brief phrase in the margin of a text. A good annotation identifies a single idea, and its entry is usually no more than three or four words. Any entry longer than a short phrase will slow down the scanning of pages, forcing you to reconstruct elaborate grammatical relationships of sentences or longer phrases (like this sentence). This takes time, and wasted time defeats the purpose of an annotation.

Click here to see a sample page with annotations of main ideas in the margins beside each paragraph.