Book annotation key: a colour code by feeling

Annotating a book means marking it as you read: highlighting lines, writing in the margins, putting tabs on the pages. An annotation key is the legend that says what each colour means. Most keys you find online are made for study: themes, symbols, characters. This one is made for something else: what the book made you feel. A year later, you can open it and find every line that made you cry at a glance.

Why a key, and why by feeling

Without a key, a colour ends up meaning whatever you felt like that day, and a page full of highlights tells you nothing later. With a key, each colour answers one question. Sorting by feeling rather than by literary device keeps it about your reading, not homework: you never have to decide whether something is "a theme", only how it landed.

Keep it short. Five to seven colours is plenty: if you have to check the key every time, you will stop using it.

A key to start with

Use it as it is or change it. What matters is that it stays the same from one book to the next.

• Yellow — lines I want to keep word for word.
• Pink — romance and chemistry: the moments that made me swoon.
• Blue — sadness: the parts that made me cry.
• Orange — it made me laugh.
• Green — hope and comfort: a line that helped.
• Purple — shock: twists, reveals, "I didn't see that coming".
• Red — anger and tension: a character I wanted to shake.

For mysteries and fantasy, many readers add one colour for clues and foreshadowing, so that a reread shows everything that was hidden in plain sight.

Symbols for the margins

A colour says what kind of moment it is; a symbol in the margin can say how much. A few common ones:

• ♥ — I loved this.
• ! — surprise.
• ? — I don't understand, or I don't trust this character.
• ~ — beautiful writing.
• ★ — the line of the book.

And when a moment really matters, a few words beat any colour: write why. "This is exactly how my grandmother talked" will mean more in five years than a pink line.

Paper books and ebooks

• Paper. On thin pages, use dry highlighters or coloured pencils so nothing shows through. If you would rather not mark the page, as with a library book or one you will lend, put removable sticky tabs in your key's colours on the edge of the page, and keep the key on a card you use as a bookmark.
• Ebooks. Highlights and notes are easy, but the colour usually stays on the device: when you export your Kindle or Kobo highlights, the file holds the text and your note, not the colour.
• Audiobooks. A bookmark plus one line about what you heard is enough to find the moment again.

Your key in Storyfeel

• Set up the key. In Settings → Color tabs there are twelve colours. Give each one you use a meaning in What this colour means, and change the colour if you like. Only colours with a meaning are offered when you mark a moment.
• Mark a moment. In Feels → Highlights, tap Add Highlight: pick the book, copy the line into The moment and write in Your thought. Then choose its Colour tab and, under How did it make you feel?, a feeling. The colour is your key; the feeling adds the nuance. Card mood changes how the card looks.
• Bring in your ebook highlights. Import Highlights reads a Kindle, a Kobo or a .csv file. Straight after, Feel this one shows the new moments one at a time so you can give each its colour and feeling, or press Skip. Here is how for the Kindle and the Kobo.
• Find them again. Filter your highlights by Tab or by Feeling: everything that made you cry, across all your books. And in Games → Recall, a few come back each day. More on how to remember what you read.

For what to write next to a highlight, try our reading journal prompts: the ones about lines and scenes work well.

Questions

How many colours should my key have?

Five to seven is easy to remember. Storyfeel holds up to twelve, for readers who want more.

Can I change my key later?

Yes. In Storyfeel, a moment shows its colour's current meaning, so if you rename a colour, every moment that carries it follows. For a new meaning, it is better to use a new colour and leave the old ones as they are.

Can anyone see my highlights?

No. There is no public profile in Storyfeel: your highlights and your key, like the rest of your library, are for you.

Is this on the free plan?

Yes. Colour tabs, highlights and their filters have no free-plan limits.

To keep every line that moved you, with its colour and its feeling, try Storyfeel free.