Idiot Highlighting
I ordered a used copy of Just-in-Time for Today and Tomorrow from Amazon. Pretty much throughout, the book is "highlighted" as follows:
Out of about 80 lines on the above two pages, 74 of them are highlighted! What is someone doing this thinking?
Highlighting serves to make occasional key passages easy to re-locate, because the highlighted lines stand out. With this much highlighting, the only lines that stand out are the unhighlighted ones. (I presume the previous reader did not intend that, since it is an awful waste of ink and time to emphasize important lines by highlighting all of the non-important lines.)
It is almost as though the person were reading with the highlighter, the way a child might read with their finger.
Out of about 80 lines on the above two pages, 74 of them are highlighted! What is someone doing this thinking?
Highlighting serves to make occasional key passages easy to re-locate, because the highlighted lines stand out. With this much highlighting, the only lines that stand out are the unhighlighted ones. (I presume the previous reader did not intend that, since it is an awful waste of ink and time to emphasize important lines by highlighting all of the non-important lines.)
It is almost as though the person were reading with the highlighter, the way a child might read with their finger.
Maybe it's reverse highlighting? What is *not* highlighted comprises the real highlights.
ReplyDeleteRehearsing for a new job redacting Clinton emails?
ReplyDeleteI saw people 'revise' this way at college. My guess is highlighting the text provides a sense of productive activity while being easier than thinking about the text.
ReplyDelete