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By annotating it.

Some scholarly articles are for skimming; some are so close to your interests and to the people whose work you make a habit of reading that you want to read it closely and get as much out of it you can. Reading what someone has written is like getting a window into their mind. When you engage it actively, it’s like a conversation where one person is doing all the talking and the other all the listening. It differs from most conversations in that it doesn’t flow by in a rush, never to be repeated. Instead, close reading of a scholarly article is an investment in time that can pay off now as well as in the future. 

Another blog post about close reading is available through this link: https://academicwriting.blog/2025/07/10/ode-to-english-majors/

Developing a System to Annotate Articles

One way to really concentrate your attention on an article is to engage it actively. This is done with familiar techniques like underlining, highlighting, and writing comments in the margins. In addition to these, I have developed my own system for coding the hard copy of articles as a way of personalizing what I take away. 

Some of the codes I inset in the margins as I annotate an article are:

	Draw a box around an unfamiliar or unusual term.
?	Point unclear or I am not sure I agree.
Yes	A point I agree with.
No	A point I disagree with.
“ “	A statement worth quoting.
	Make a note.

The point of annotating is to actively engage and react to a text. The coding system I developed is comparable to note taking but the notes are penned right on a hard copy of the article. The last two codes – the quotation mark and the check mark – are related to a second system I maintain. That is a set of hand-written notecards. That seems time consuming. It is. But it also helps me remember what I’ve read . I organize the note cards alphabetically, by author so I can always find my way back to the information. 

The Annotations Streamline Re-Reading

Unless I find an article to be of little use to me, I store them in file cabinets in a closet in my study by author so that I can find my way back to them. Since I first started writing about mixed methods research in 2012, the articles I have accumulated are now crammed into two, four drawer file cabinets. I can often recall articles I’ve read, but in retrospect I wish I’d thought to keep a cumulative list in spreadsheet. 

There is an additional benefit of the type of system for annotating journal articles I mentioned. My re-reading is much speedier because I only read what I’ve highlighted and annotated. The system is as useful in the re-reading as it is in the reading.