Advice for Annotation

Annotating Advice

When you are asked to "close read" a text, typically you are expected to read a short passage of prose or some lines of poetry and then make some observations about what you have read.  As the piece you have read is relatively short, you are expected to observe minute and subtle details in the text: word usage, syntactical patterns, subtle use of figurative language, etc.

Annotating is simply the act of writing down your observations as you are close reading a text.

Trust your instinct when close reading.  Write down anything that seems unusual or stands out to you as possibly significant.  You do not need to fully understand its significance yet, but trust that your intuition is correct in that there is some importance to discovered.

Here are some questions you can ask to help prompt yourself while close reading a text:

1)  Does the passage develop from one point to another?  Does tension build?  Does tension release?

2)  What kind of vocabulary do you notice in the piece?  Is there a pattern that you notice in the author's word choice?

3)  What is the sentence structure like?  Do the sentences flow?  Does the punctuation make them feel choppy and clipped?  Do the sentences feel dense and hard to decode, or are they easy to read and accessible?

4)  What kinds of literary devices and figurative language does the author use?  If there are many metaphors and similes, do they have anything in common (i.e. they are all sports metaphors, or banking metaphors)?

5)  Do you notice anything about the relationship between characters in the piece, or the relationship between objects with symbolic value?  Is one character being used as a foil for another?  Is one character a reflection of another?  Does that bird flying in the distance correspond with a character's new-found sense of freedom?

6)  Is there a shift in tone or voice anywhere in the piece?

7)  How would you describe the voice or point-of-view in the piece?  Does it change?  Does the point-of-view show you only limited things but does not give you access to other things?


These are just a handful of questions you might ask yourself.  Remember, we are working on the level of observation here, so do not put pressure on your self to figure out what everything "means" right now.  Just be observant.