The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

by Alan Jacobs

But if you write the question in the book’s margin—even if you just scrawl a question mark—you are marking the scene of your confusion. You are registering your puzzlement, not for the book’s sake but for your own sake. The interruption in the flow of your reading is a significant event, and you are quite literally taking note of it. Writing out the whole of your question is better than just flinging a question mark onto the page, because doing the former takes more time—it gets you out of the flow of mere passive reception—and because it forces you to articulate the precise nature of your vexation. A mere question mark could indicate confusion, disagreement, a

this is really wonderful stuff i wish i could have read this a long time ago