zhayena: I’ll admit, I fall into that pit at times. If the readings assigned are truly helpful, I do my best to read them, but often, the profs just assign stuff that doesn’t really pertain to what they’re teaching. Even then I’ll try to read the material, but only if I have ample time. Otherwise I drop ‘em.

Renee: My books are the same. I’m okay with getting used copies, even with underlining in them, but I generally like them to remain in the condition I receive them in. That is, I’m extremely anal retentive when it comes to my books. For that reason, I very rarely lend out books unless it’s to a friend who I KNOW will take care of them.

Nils: Underliner! Grrrr!

Zeitlos: Hah. Can you elaborate on the Skripte copies? I don’t really understand what you mean, but it sounds interesting.

Gnorb: That sounds like a better way to underline – but alas, I still wouldn’t do it. Regardless of how helpful it might be – and I’m certainly not arguing that it’s not helpful – I can’t bring myself to write in my books.

Most of the time, no. Usually this is because they don’t know HOW to underline. Even people in college will underline (or highlight) the most inane details, then eventually stop after they realize that highlighting that much stuff is just not worth it, and highlighting just a little wouldn’t be worth it either, or so they figure.

I underline my books. Not all of them, but some of them (mostly my self-help books). I’ve learned over the years that don’t underline the stuff you already know and agree with (which you’ll always think is good, and which people LOVE to underline, for one reason or another), nor do you underline all the stuff you find amazing at that moment. You read the chapter once, not underlining anyting. Then you read the chapter a second time. If the sentence strikes you just as strongly the second time as it does the first, underline otherwise, don’t. Of course, there are times when there’s just SOOO much good info that it ALL deserves to be underlined. That’s when I star the paragraph(s) and draw a line alongside the text.

For the record, I hate — HATE — getting someone else’s underline, and will buy pretty much only new books for that very reason.

That said, I do look up stuff and I won’t hesitate to mark, annotate or correct when I see fit. The other day I used the flyleaf to jot down a note about something I had to remember.

I underlined when I was an undergrad, I found it helpful later to pull quotes and find the important parts. But I will admit that by the end of a class, I usually wasn’t doing the readings, and when I was, I wasn’t underlining. I would guess that if these are books used by universities, you’re probably seeing a rather similar thing from other people like me.