Text underlining and annotating¶
Element · All elements
Evidence · 14 claims (3 for, 8 mixed, 3 against) · 10 studies (4 causal, 2 quant-synthesis, 2 associational, 1 review, 1 design),q1–q4· 4 of 10 report an effect size · 13 claims rest on one study
Description¶
A study aid involving marking text to indicate importance. Underlining (or highlighting) designates important information within the text; annotating adds marginal notes or written responses that go beyond selection to interpretation. The two differ in cognitive depth: underlining is a selection activity, while annotating is a generative one.
Design Implications¶
Underlining alone is one of the weakest studied techniques for durable learning; Dunlosky et al. rate it low utility because it rarely improves performance relative to simply reading Highlighting and underlining show minimal benefit over reading alone across most studies. [~M]. Its value depends on what gets marked: learners who underline high-relevant content perform better than those who mark low-relevant content, and many students — especially novices — select poorly Nist & Hogrebe, 1985 [~M]. Annotating, which requires learners to paraphrase, question, or connect ideas, engages generative processing and produces stronger comprehension than passive marking Chi & Wylie, 2014 [+M].
Context¶
Requirements¶
- Text of appropriate difficulty; learners must be able to judge relevance to mark selectively
- Training or modeling in what to mark (topic sentences, definitions, key claims) — untrained students tend to over-mark or mark isolated facts
- For annotating: prompts or sentence starters that push beyond copying ("Why does this matter?", "This connects to…")
- A follow-up use: markings only help if the learner later reviews or transforms them into summaries, outlines, or self-test questions
Constraints¶
- Underlining can create an illusion of fluency — marked text feels learned, reducing later study effort Dunlosky et al., 2013 [-M]
- Experimenter-generated markings reduce the number of decisions a reader makes regarding importance, which can remove the very processing that makes marking useful Experimenter-provided underlining is at least as effective as student-generated underlining, likely because students select poorly. [~M]
- Over-marking (more than roughly 10–20% of text) eliminates the selection benefit entirely, since everything becomes "important"
- Underlining isolated facts encourages verbatim memory of fragments rather than understanding of structure
- Less effective for learners with weak prior knowledge, who cannot yet distinguish central from peripheral content
Target Learners¶
- College students and advanced readers who have enough domain knowledge to judge relevance Nist & Hogrebe, 1985 [~M]
- Novices benefit more from provided markings or Advance Organizers than from generating their own
- Students trained in selective marking strategies outperform untrained peers
Target Learning Goals¶
- Retention of key facts and definitions for later test performance
- Reading comprehension monitoring — annotations externalize a reader's evolving understanding
- Preparation for deeper study activities (summarizing, outlining, self-testing)
Affordances¶
- Annotating — this element is the concrete enactment of the annotating principle; marginal notes convert reading from passive reception into generative processing
- Active Learning — annotation is a low-cost active-reading move; per the ICAP framework, generative marking (constructive) outperforms passive reading Chi & Wylie, 2014
- Chunking — marking boundaries between ideas segments text into reviewable units, reducing the load of re-reading long passages
- Clear Structure — consistent marking conventions (e.g., underline = claim, margin note = question) make a text's argumentative structure visible on re-reading
Claims¶
- Across ten learning techniques, distributed practice and practice testing have the largest effects and underlining and summarization the smallest [-M]
- Ten-year-old readers predominantly underline subordinate passage details rather than superordinate conceptual material, even when conceptual postquestions focus attention on topic sentences [~W] — attached 2026-10-15 from Rickards et al. (1979), which proposed "Underlining and conceptual postquestion manipulation for children's text study (Rickards & Denner 1979 experiment)".
- Recall of passage details is most depressed when children receive both underlining and conceptual postquestions [-W] — attached 2026-10-15 from Rickards et al. (1979), which proposed "Underlining and conceptual postquestion manipulation for children's text study (Rickards & Denner 1979 experiment)".
- Trace-data cognitive learning strategy codes show no correlation with highlighted key words or auxiliary words, while key-word and auxiliary-word highlighting correlate highly [~W] — attached 2026-10-18 from Laura Dörrenbächer-Ulrich et al. (2021), which proposed "Trace data from text highlighting and notes as an objective measure of cognitive strategy use".
- High-learning groups show a significantly shorter time gap between initiating annotations and re-annotations than low-learning groups, indicating reduced attention distance [~W]
- High- and low-learning groups do not differ significantly in the quantity or breadth of initiating annotations and re-annotations [~W]
- Initiating annotation frequency strongly correlates with re-annotation frequency across groups (Kendall's tau = 0.95) [~W]
- When every word was judged, words circled as to-be-remembered were recalled better and words underlined as to-be-forgotten worse than a no-instruction control group's recall [~W]
- Engagement via annotation (underlining, highlighting, notes) shows no significant effect on comprehension [-W]
- After introduction, the student used the INSERT text-marking strategy consistently and independently, suggesting transfer [+W]
The evidence by question¶
- Does asking learners to highlight or underline while reading improve learning over reading alone, and for which outcomes? Learner highlighting of text gives a small memory benefit but no reliable comprehension benefit, and evidence on other forms of annotation is not yet recorded here [+S]
- Does it matter what is marked, and who marks it (learner or instructor)? Relevancy of emphasized text directs attention and influences test performance [+M]
Related Elements¶
- Advance Organizers — provide the relevance framework novices need before marking selectively
- Summarization — the natural next step; annotations become the raw material for summaries
- Practice Testing — a more effective use of the same review time; annotations can be converted into self-test questions
- Graphic Organizers — externalize text structure the way annotations externalize reader response
Examples¶
- Headings and Highlight Strategy — learners use headings to predict content, then highlight only text that answers their predictions, constraining over-marking
- SQ3R (Survey–Question–Read–Recite–Review) — classic study system in which marking during reading feeds a recitation/review cycle rather than substituting for it
- Perusall (https://www.perusall.com) — social annotation platform where students comment on shared readings; converts private marking into visible, discussable generative processing
- Hypothesis (https://web.hypothes.is) — open web annotation tool used in college courses for collaborative marginal commentary
Key Sources¶
- Nist, S. L., & Hogrebe, M. C. (1985). The effects of high and low relevant text underlining on test performance. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED265520). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED265520
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. doi:10.1177/1529100612453266
- Chi, M. T. H., & Wylie, R. (2014). The ICAP framework: Linking cognitive engagement to active learning outcomes. Educational Psychologist, 49(4), 219–243. doi:10.1080/00461520.2014.965823
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
element |
id |
text-underlining-and-annotating |
title |
Text underlining and annotating |
description |
A study aid involving marking text to indicate importance. |
status |
review |
canonical |
True |
generated |
by claude/unspecified on 2026-08-29 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
3 — nist-1985, dunlosky-2013, chi-2014 |
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