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i feel kind of weird i don't think i've ever talked about my in-depth annotation system i feel like i'm leaving my soul bare to the world is that weird that's probably weird hello book reading friends welcome back to my channel or
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welcome if you're new my name is melanie and today i finally bring you my video on how to annotate books annotating 101 annotating for beginners i think everyone has a very
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different process as to how they annotate their books how they go about tabbing what each little color means what types of tabs they use whether they highlight whether they don't and i just thought it would be a
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fun video idea to tell you guys exactly how i annotate what i'm looking for when i annotate and some pros and cons into the whole annotating process so you get a little bit more insight as to why i do it and
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why i would recommend doing it if you have yet to subscribe to my channel don't forget to do so down below for more bookish content i am constantly uploading videos around two or three a week you can also follow me on all of my social medias which are always linked
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down below as well as my amazon wishlist i am so excited to be making this video i think annotating is one of the most fun aspects of reading for me so as to why i annotate i always go into books with a
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split brain i am 50 reader 50 writer and i like to go into books not only for enjoyment and to lose myself within the story and the world but i also go in with a more analytical
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brain going in with a more analytical brain also allows me to really nail down what rating i will give the book and why i'm giving it that rating and i feel one of the only ways for me to really nail that down is if i
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annotate the book and i keep tabs on my progress as a reader to keep track of what i'm really liking or what i may be disliking annotating is also really beneficial if you're a reviewer whether you're a blogger or a booktuber or a
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bookstagrammer it really helps you keep track of those favorite moments like i stated before that you can bring up on your review where if you didn't really like something you can also bring that up in your review that'll be really
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insightful for the people who are watching or reading your vlog i have also personally found that annotating helps me retain info a lot better and this goes along the lines of what we used to do in school with highlighting our textbooks
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and decorating our notebooks everyone has their own little tricks and techniques to retain info better but for me at least when i'm reading i find highlighting passages or underlining certain lines really helps me remember the story
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better which again helps me be a better reviewer and if it's a book that i am really really enjoying i really don't want to forget what happens in the book so it also again is really beneficial i'm also not even going to lie
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there is something so aesthetically pleasing at least for me about an annotated book it just sparks happiness whenever i see a book tab and i open it and i sift through it and i see all of my post-it notes where i see all of my underlining
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or i see certain one-liners that i wrote in the book itself so for me it's a really cathartic experience and it's also something i can look back on and be like wow did i really feel that at that moment and when you do a reread it's also really
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interesting once you know everything that happens in the book to see a first timer reaction in the book so it's all really fun for me like look at that you can't tell me a book doesn't look prettier with tabs on
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it just gives a little bit more character in my opinion and i think it's to me in a way it's also very similar to buying a used copy that has like a broken spine i just feel like it gives the book
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a lot of character and a lot of personality that it wouldn't necessarily have otherwise i know this is not everyone's cup of tea but i love having a personalized book that is catered to me and my first timer opinions or if it's a
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re-read i can go back and write something else and again i just feel like it's a very personal experience and sometimes the notes that i write in books are very personal to my experiences or to my opinions and
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again i just really love that about it that being said a few of the cons i guess you could call it of annotating is that it may take you longer to read than if you weren't annotating i find myself
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taking a little bit longer to get through a book nowadays than i used to a year or two ago when i wasn't really annotating and it's not that it's a way longer process but if you're underlining and highlighting and writing
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in the book it can take a little bit of time away from reading and also it may not be as fun for certain people as if you would be reading without annotating so i think those for me
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are the cons that come up right away when talking about annotating also if you're planning to tab a lot like we readers do sometimes it can get a little bit pricier not necessarily with the tabs but perhaps
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with the tools and the pens and the post-its and whatnot so it really depends on what tools you are getting that would make the experience a little bit more costly but overall there are some great options on amazon that you can find for
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very cheap and for great amounts as well and i think that is everything i have to say about why i annotate and some of the cons of annotating if you will and now i will show you how i annotate the tools that i use and
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my process so let's get on with it i'm excited so as you can see i have an array of books behind me that are tabbed and annotated and i have taken them out of my collection so that i can show you how
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they look like what i used to do at the beginning what i'm currently doing because it has changed throughout the month so if i put up the books like this you can really see all of the tabs in all of the books and there is just something
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really really satisfying about it now if you look at these three books you will notice that they all have the same style of tabs and they look quite different from scythe and throne of glass let me break this down for you because
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scythe and throne of glass were some of the first books that i annotated and tabbed so they do look quite different than the books that i am tabbing and annotating now the reason as to why is because i used to use
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different tabs now as you can see these tabs are basically transparent and they have a little bit of color on the inside and that is because they are legal tabs they literally say please sign
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here those were the first tabs that i was using because they were the ones that i had on hand so i didn't really want to invest in any more tabs and it is the same case with throne of glass as you can see the tabs are
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sticking out quite a lot and one of the cons to this i guess you could call it if you like to display your books face front you wouldn't really be able to put anything beside it because it would squish all of the tabs these right here
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are the tabs that i used to use when i first started annotating as you can see i still have closed one and i actually have an opened one right behind me and these are by stud mark they have five different colors
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and every color has 20 sheets which is about standard i feel with any single tab set that you get so these are the first ones that i used to use and again i didn't really mind them if i find them on amazon i will make sure to link them down below in case you
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want more transparent tabs i also got these ones but i never actually ended up using them and these are force flags school and office and it has 144 pieces
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and they look like this it is just four colors and i never ended up using these because i actually use a lot of colors when annotating and tabbing so if you want a more simple system in which you just want to mark the things that you love or maybe
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the things that you dislike or maybe great quotes and you only need about four colors maybe this would be a better set for you and i think this is the thing that i like about annotating is that everyone has a different process
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everyone has different things that they tab and that they annotate so you can definitely personalize to something that works for you that being said this is what my tabs look like now and as you can see they don't really
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stick out that much from the book and let me just show you real quick crown of midnight is a paperback that i also tabbed and annotated with the new tabs and as you can see they are not sticking out that far
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either whenever i am putting on the tabs i make sure that they are around the same size sticking out and i really just eyeball them i don't use a ruler or anything of the sort i just lay the book and i make sure
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that all of them are sticking out around the same size these are the tabs that i use now and i buy a pretty big pack on amazon and it's only 5.99 they are by kikali i think it's pronounced it comes in this
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big plastic bag but they bring quite a bit i think they bring 1600 tabs and they are a mix of the black ones that are pointy and then the squared ones
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that i'm not particularly a fan of i much rather the pointy ones but they do bring a mix of both and i absolutely love these i do have a lot of options with colors so i can tab a lot more sections in the book
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and also these last quite a bit i think i have only ran out of one complete set and then i just keep running out of the same colors which is why i have so many open right now i will make sure
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to leave these links down below because i think this is one of the best values that i've found for tabs on amazon i do pretty much have a universal tabbing system although it can't change for a book
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what i personally do to keep track of what every color means for a book because it may change is that i paste a post-it at the beginning of the book that has my key and i write down what every color
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means i think i finally cracked the code with the annotating system that i want to use and with the poppy war you will notice i have two post-its at the beginning of the book these two post-its are different the first one at the top
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is the key and then the bottom one is trigger warnings and this is something that i've started doing with books quite recently and that is because i want to remember trigger warnings in books when i recommend them to you guys or when i
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talk about them in a wrap up or in whatever video i may be doing now as to what every color means now in my universal tapping system pink means great writing or favorite quotes
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it could be anything that i love in a book orange means i'm mad and i started including this in books because i found myself being really mad at certain things that happened yellow means important details green means shocking
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blue means i'm sad this dark purple means themes and triggers and then this violet lighter purple color means world building overall that's just what i use mainly for fantasy books which is
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the genre that i read in the most i do read other genres but i typically stay within fantasy or stories that have a lot of world building so that is why i settled for this particular universal
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tapping system however if you don't really read fantasy and you read more romance or you read more thrillers you can definitely cater the colors to things that you would like to tab in those particular
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genres and again you can definitely work your way up through annotating and tabbing you can start with maybe four colors or three colors and use them for things that you know you're going to be tabbing throughout your read or you can use a seven color
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annotating system like i use and going along the lines of working your way up through annotating like i said before i am now underlining and highlighting passages in books i didn't really used to do that with
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throne of glass which is one of my first annotated books i literally just wrote in pencil and underlined maybe a few passages but not really that many so you can definitely work your way up with pencil
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or what i used to do as well and i can show you with the night swim by megan golden i did underline with pencil and i did write there are several parts in which i just did a note with a post-it and i just put
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note on writing or maybe i put in a possible theory and i did all of that in post-it so you can again definitely work your way up you can start with a post-it and then slowly work your way through pencil and then with pen and then you can
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actually highlight and that little ladder right there will give you a lot of time to get comfortable with annotating so you can figure out what works best for you so that being said i do use a lot of
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post-its in my books particularly because i write in all caps so my writing can get quite big quite lengthy very quickly so i do like to keep post-its on hand in case i
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am writing a more lengthy note or a more lengthy reaction that way i know whatever i'm writing in pen in here is gonna be written out correctly and i don't mess up in the book now
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again this is a lot of work you definitely do not need to do this this way but the reason why i have so many colored post-its is because i like to match the post-it to the color tab i know that sounds ridiculous but again
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i like the look of it i just used to use one stack for the entire book not like the entire stack but like one color but now i like color coordinating the tabs to the post-its again you don't have to do that by any
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means but i quite like the look of it and let me just show you with the night swim that is basically what i did i did paste them with um with washi tape because i was using other post-its
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that weren't really pasting that well to the book let's say if i had like a note on character or like a note on writing i would use a pink post-it another tool that i may use when annotating although i don't use it that often is
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if maybe a post-it isn't sticking that well or at the beginning of the book when i paste my key and my trigger warnings just so that i can give it a little bit more of an aesthetic look to it is washi tape and i only have these washi tapes right here
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they are straight colored ones i really want to get cute ones like with moons and like stars something that looks a little bit prettier on my books because although i really like the look of these they are not my favorite but i did get these washi
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tapes from a store here in panama and they were pretty cheap so that's why i got them however if i can find some washi tapes that are around this color palette on amazon i will make sure to link them down below and there's no
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rhyme or reason to the colors that i choose i just use whatever i feel at the moment and this is basically what i do let's say with the trigger warnings and the key i just put little tiny washi tapes on it
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to really paste it into the book so that they don't fall off i think i might have done the same yeah i did the same to the poppy war i just used a longer strand and now to the most important part of it
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beside the actual tabs these are the pens highlighters markers i guess you could say that i use when annotating i just have this transparent pencil case that again i got at a store here in panama where i also
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got the washi tapes but as to the pens that i use let me just show you the black pens that i am using currently and i am loving them because they are fine but not too fine and they are not gel ink so
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that means that they don't smudge and they don't run when you write in your book or in a post-it and i believe these are pentel i may be wrong and they are a 1.0 so they are not that thin
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and they are not that thick either i quite like this particular pen to write with as to the color pens that i use to actually underline passages in the book i use these ones by papermate
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the only downside of these is that i don't have the five colors that i need i only have pink purple green and blue the only colors that i am missing in this set of pens would be yellow and
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orange i need to see if they even have them because these came in a set of four again these are the papermate inkjoy and they are also a 1.0 so the same exact size of the black pen
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and these run so smoothly and again they don't smudge which i love and the color is also super vibrant and super opaque which i like because it looks so pretty when you're underlining and
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what i actually use to make a straight line is the tab plastic that comes behind them but these pens i love so so much i will definitely leave them linked down below because they are the best
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pens i've found for underlining and writing in my books in these particular colors and this is also why i got actual pins because i do have the stabilo pens and i do have the staedtler pens but they do bleed sometimes in the book and
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sometimes they can rip the page so i'm not a fan of that in the slightest so that is why i don't use it in my books especially because some books have really thin pages so i'm just making sure i use something that is gentle on the page that doesn't
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bleed doesn't run as for highlighters i use the sharpie highlighters and again i am working my way through finding the colors that i don't have so again if i can find a set that has all six colors i will make sure to
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leave that linked down below so that you guys can have all the info in the description box you don't have to go hunting for every single color these don't really bleed on my pages they may depending on the page size and
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the thickness of it but overall these stay where they need to stay as opposed to the ones that i was using before these are the ones that i've used since high school these are old as all hell but they are still good they still
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have ink so i was using these at the beginning but they do bleed a little bit especially in that first press they do bleed as opposed to again the sharpie ones and i'm not even gonna lie what i've been doing because i don't
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have an orange or a yellow pen is that i have been underlining everything with pen and then highlighting with these two colors because i don't have the matching colored pens and that is basically all that i do for annotating tabbing and my
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entire system and the way that i've worked myself up to where i am now i hope you guys found this video helpful and useful and if you are just starting annotating or if you're already annotating
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let me know down below in the comments i find this subject is incredibly fascinating because again everyone has their own system their own little thing that they do and although i may also change my universal tabbing system for book
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it pretty much stays the same no matter what genre i am reading so again let me know down below if you have been looking to tab if this is the first time that you're hearing of it let me know all that down below so we can chat
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and if you have yet to subscribe to my channel don't forget to do so down below as well i am constantly uploading content that i am sure you don't want to miss so join the fam i think we're pretty cool over here but also follow me on all my social medias which are always linked
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down below as well as my amazon wishlist in case you want to support me on my channel and give me a book but yeah i love you guys so so much and i will see you on my next video bye guys
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