The Corner-Marking Method (Part 2)
What to do if you're against "tattooing" your precious physical books, yet still want to benefit from marginalia.
The first part of this review introduced Cal Newport’s physical books annotation method, listed his conventions and supplemented it with related observations. If you’re OK with having multiple digital and analogue versions of the same book, or if you’re ok decorating the margins with your scribbles, you’re probably all set.
This week, we’re discussing how those who cherish their books and keep them pristine can still annotate them non-destructively.
Ways to Implement the Method Non-Destructively with Hardcover Books
Despite preaching minimalism, I can spend an unorthodox amount of time in succulent stationery stores. I do have a stationery problem. Though I rarely need most of the gear sold there, I can see how many of these tools can implement the above method without permanently marking your book.
Page Darts
Extra-thin book darts, usually made of durable metal such as brass, act as the equivalent of a slash when you look at the book's profile and as a square bracket or an underline equivalent when you open a page. They don’t bloat the book and are inexpensive, though generally costlier than the peel-able bookmarks described further. They’re also superior to the slash because they don’t require you to flip through the pages. Look at the edge, and you’ll instantly see all your hooks.
Unlike other marking methods described in this section, book darts have the advantage of being reusable. Should your previous marks bother you as they bother Mr Newport, you can remove them and redeploy them in new positions instead of buying a new book copy as he does.
Of course, attaching a dart to the page's right spot is slightly more time-consuming, but I'd argue that the time difference is marginal. Will an extra few seconds make or break it? Are you really in such a hurry?
You don't have to carry the entire box of darts on the go. You can attach a few to the book's cover or your favourite bookmark to pick from while reading during your commute. Bookmarks can also be satisfying art pieces, enticing you to read the book. I recommend you invest in some if you're a bookworm.
Despite being called "book darts", they aren't restricted to books. Since I have no hardcover books, I use them exclusively in my notebooks. Once I've transferred handwritten or hand-drawn information to my digital vault, I remove the darts and discard the notebook.
A bonus with metal darts is every metal's properties. For example, brass, which most of these are made of, has anti-bacterial properties. So, not only will they develop a nice oxidised patina over time, but they'll also guard you against gems!
All in all, I feel like book darts are a must-have for avid readers and note-takers who also happen to be minimalists, addicted to beautiful stationery and don't want to or can't commit permanent annotations.
Sticky Bookmarks
An alternative to book darts is the classic thin, sticky bookmarks. They've been around longer than the darts and come in different colours and sizes. They, too, don't bloat the book and provide an additional colour-coding feature that you can use to differentiate between pages with and without a star and switch to a new colour every time you re-read the same book but for a different project.
Most of these allow you to mark them. This will enable you to use one colour but mark the necessary pages with a star on the bookmark.
These days, small sets of stickies come packaged in sticky dispensers that you can easily affix to the book cover. Alternatively, you can purchase a separate metallic clip to attach to the dispenser. Now, you can non-destructively pull the hook from one book and connect it to the next book or your notebook. This is useful if you're reading several books simultaneously or want to mark pages of your handwriting.
If you have an attachable (or not) pen loop, you can opt for sticky bookmarks rolled into a pen-size dispenser. In today's stationery world, the sky is still the limit.
Peelable Markers
Besides affixing, you can also stick markers on your pages. Sticky highlighters, bookmarks and notes come in various shapes, sizes and colours. They can be opaque or transparent, allowing you to see the highlighted text if necessary. Almost all of them you can write on. Pick the ones you can safely remove (sometimes, even reapply several times).
Erasable Highlighters
The first highlighters I've ever held proudly wore a “permanent marker” label. Today’s stationery stores have expanded their offering to include long-awaited erasable ones. They come with an eraser on the opposite side of the pen, as a typical pencil would. However, instead of removing a layer of lead, these erasers create sufficient heat through friction to dissolve the colour.
This instrument is more flexible than the aforementioned sticky highlighter stripes, but their use is limited to the equivalent of underlining or marking a passage with a square bracket. I'm unsure if it can help imitate other conventions of "The Corner-Marking Method". Let me know if you have a creative way of doing so.
I feel like you might want to use something like this if you want to be able to edit your highlights instead of erasing them all. Buying a new copy of the book might be more reasonable, depending on how “greedy” you are with your highlights.
Readwise Scanner
Readwise is a book highlights manager I rely on and can recommend. It works beautifully with ebooks, but its capabilities extend to the analogue world, allowing you to import highlights from your hardcover specimens.
This is a perfect solution if your final goal is to move your highlights to the digital world at some point or to grab a highlight with you from a library or a bookstore. I haven't tested it on any precious antique books, but I'm sure Readwise's OCR will do, at least, a decent job. It looks like I can even recognise most of my loopy cursive handwriting. Yes, sometimes I want to highlight myself.
Pencil & Eraser
This is far from being as fun as all the methods mentioned above. But this is how we did it before creative geniuses inundated us with novel tools. If nothing else, mechanical pencils are also a deep stationery rabbit hole.
You must dial back the pressure on your pencil to avoid creating permanent grooves on the paper. I recommend choosing a softer lead, too. Something like 2B and softer should do the trick.
If you overdo it, you might erase a thin layer of the print. If you apply too much pressure, you might accidentally jam the page with your eraser. In my opinion, these risks are not substantial enough for minimalists to opt for them.
How I Do It
The Corner-Marking Method is a sound approach to physical book annotation, and I notice some resemblance with my workflow. A slash would be the equivalent of a digital bookmark, underlining and bracketing — highlighting, and a pentagram — a favourited highlight in Readwise once exported.
Conclusion
”The Corner-Marking Method” is probably the most concise and declarative way of annotating a book I’ve seen. Very few bells and whistles will only make sense to the originator upon future reviews, which is by design.
As always, I suggest learning the method, trying it, and seeing what parts fit your workflow and which should be ignored or amended. ”The Corner-Marking Method” works if you’re reading a digital copy or a hardcover one.
This will depend a lot on why you’re reading in the first place. Most of us aren’t academics or best-selling writers and might disregard the system altogether. However, I’d argue that this method is a fantastic proxy for more profound reading, note-taking and personal knowledge management. It’s low-friction enough for you not to be discouraged upon initial use. Start there, and if you feel like you’re motivated to do more, gradually move the slider towards the other extremity of the spectrum, such as Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten,
’s “Progressive Summarisation” or ’s “”.Suppose you don’t intend to write a book or don’t produce any creative output. In that case, you still greatly benefit from adding this methodology to your reading process, as it will drastically improve the amount of information you can retain, remember and recall later. Most people I know complain that nothing of what they read sticks in the long term. If you value your time, allow yourself to slow down a bit and deploy your hooks in your next read.
Thank you for reading The Mechanics of Knowledge Management, Knowledge Engineer. The best compliment you can make is a referral to a like-minded thinker. Knowledge is stronger with others.