Howtoread PDF
Howtoread PDF
Howtoread PDF
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How
can
you
learn
the
most
from
a
book
or
any
other
piece
of
writing
when
you're
reading
for
information,
rather
than
for
pleasure?
Its
satisfying
to
start
at
the
beginning
and
read
straight
through
to
the
end.
Some
books,
such
as
novels,
have
to
be
read
this
way,
since
a
basic
principle
of
fiction
is
to
hold
the
reader
in
suspense.
Your
whole
purpose
in
reading
fiction
is
to
follow
the
writers
lead,
allowing
him
or
her
to
spin
a
story
bit
by
bit.
But
many
of
the
books,
articles,
and
other
documents
youll
read
during
your
undergraduate
and
graduate
years,
and
possibly
during
the
rest
of
your
professional
life,
wont
be
novels.
Instead,
theyll
be
non-fiction:
textbooks,
manuals,
journal
articles,
histories,
academic
studies,
and
so
on.
The
purpose
of
reading
things
like
this
is
to
gain,
and
retain,
information.
Here,
finding
out
what
happens
as
quickly
and
easily
as
possible
is
your
main
goal.
So
unless
youre
stuck
in
prison
with
nothing
else
to
do,
NEVER
read
a
non-fiction
book
or
article
from
beginning
to
end.
Instead,
when
youre
reading
for
information,
you
should
ALWAYS
jump
ahead,
skip
around,
and
use
every
available
strategy
to
discover,
then
to
understand,
and
finally
to
remember
what
the
writer
has
to
say.
This
is
how
youll
get
the
most
out
of
a
book
in
the
smallest
amount
of
time.
Using
the
methods
described
here,
you
should
be
able
to
read
a
300-page
book
in
six
to
eight
hours.
Of
course,
the
more
time
you
spend,
the
more
youll
learn
and
the
better
youll
understand
the
book.
But
your
time
is
limited.
Here
are
some
strategies
to
help
you
do
this
effectively.
Most
of
these
can
be
applied
not
only
to
books,
but
also
to
any
other
kind
of
non-fiction
reading,
from
articles
to
websites.
Table
1,
on
the
next
page,
summarizes
the
techniques,
and
the
following
pages
explain
them
in
more
detail.
In
reading
to
learn,
your
goal
should
always
be
to
get
all
the
way
through
the
assignment.
Its
much
more
important
to
have
a
general
grasp
of
the
arguments
or
hypotheses,
evidence,
and
conclusions
than
to
understand
every
detail.
In
fact,
no
matter
how
carefully
you
read,
you
wont
remember
most
of
the
details
anyway.
What
you
can
do
is
remember
and
record
the
main
points.
And
if
you
remember
those,
you
know
enough
to
find
the
material
again
if
you
ever
do
need
to
recall
the
details.
Paul N. Edwards
Rationale
Read actively
Mark
up
your
reading
with
your
own
notes.
This
helps
you
learn
and
also
helps
you
find
important
passages
later.
Paul N. Edwards
In
fact,
the
more
directly
and
realistically
you
confront
your
limits,
the
more
effective
you
will
be
at
practically
everything.
Setting
time
limits
and
keeping
to
them
(while
accomplishing
your
goals)
is
one
of
the
most
important
life
skills
you
can
learn.
So
never
start
to
read
without
planning
when
to
stop.
Read
actively
Dont
wait
for
the
author
to
hammer
you
over
the
head.
Instead,
from
the
very
beginning,
constantly
generate
hypotheses
(the
main
point
of
the
book
is
that...)
and
questions
(How
does
the
author
know
that...?)
about
the
book.
Making
brief
notes
about
these
can
help.
As
you
read,
try
to
confirm
your
hypotheses
and
answer
your
questions.
Once
you
finish,
review
these.
Know
the
author(s)
and
organizations
Knowing
who
wrote
a
book
helps
you
judge
its
quality
and
understand
its
full
significance.
Paul N. Edwards
Authors
are
people.
Like
anyone
else,
their
views
are
shaped
by
their
educations,
their
jobs,
their
early
lives,
and
the
rest
of
their
experiences.
Also
like
anyone
else,
they
have
prejudices,
blind
spots,
desperate
moments,
failings,
and
desires
as
well
as
insights,
brilliance,
objectivity,
and
successes.
Notice
all
of
it.
Most
authors
belong
to
organizations:
universities,
corporations,
governments,
newspapers,
magazines.
These
organizations
each
have
cultures,
hierarchies
of
power,
and
social
norms.
Organizations
shape
both
how
a
work
is
written
and
the
content
of
what
it
says.
For
example,
university
professors
are
expected
to
write
books
and/or
journal
articles
in
order
to
get
tenure.
These
pieces
of
writing
must
meet
certain
standards
of
quality,
defined
chiefly
by
other
professors;
for
them,
content
usually
matters
more
than
good
writing.
Journalists,
by
contrast,
are
often
driven
by
deadlines
and
the
need
to
please
large
audiences.
Because
of
this,
their
standards
of
quality
are
often
directed
more
toward
clear
and
engaging
writing
than
toward
unimpeachable
content;
their
sources
are
usually
oral
rather
than
written.
The
more
you
know
about
the
author
and
his/her
organization
and/or
discipline,
the
better
you
will
be
able
to
evaluate
what
you
read.
Try
to
answer
questions
like
these:
What
shaped
the
authors
intellectual
perspective?
What
is
his
or
her
profession?
Is
the
author
an
academic,
a
journalist,
a
professional
(doctor,
lawyer,
industrial
scientist,
etc.)?
Expertise?
Other
books
and
articles?
Intellectual
network(s)?
Gender?
Race?
Class?
Political
affiliation?
Why
did
the
author
decide
to
write
this
book?
When?
For
what
audience(s)?
Who
paid
for
the
research
work
(private
foundations,
government
grant
agencies,
industrial
sponsors,
etc.)?
Who
wrote
jacket
blurbs
in
support
of
the
book?
You
can
often
(though
not
always)
learn
about
much
of
this
from
the
acknowledgments,
the
bibliography,
and
the
authors
biographical
statement.
Read
it
three
times
This
is
the
key
technique.
Youll
get
the
most
out
of
the
book
if
you
read
it
three
times
each
time
for
a
different
purpose.
Paul N. Edwards
a)
Overview:
discovery
(5-10
percent
of
total
time)
Here
you
read
very
quickly,
following
the
principle
(described
below)
of
reading
for
high
information
content.
Your
goal
is
to
discover
the
book.
You
want
a
quick-and-dirty,
unsophisticated,
general
picture
of
the
writers
purpose,
methods,
and
conclusions.
Mark
without
reading
carefully
headings,
passages,
and
phrases
that
seem
important
(youll
read
these
more
closely
the
second
time
around.)
Generate
questions
to
answer
on
your
second
reading:
what
does
term
or
phrase
X
mean?
Why
doesnt
the
author
cover
subject
Y?
Who
is
Z?
b)
Detail:
understanding
(70-80
percent
of
total
time)
Within
your
time
constraints,
read
the
book
a
second
time.
This
time,
your
goal
is
understanding:
to
get
a
careful,
critical,
thoughtful
grasp
of
the
key
points,
and
to
evaluate
the
authors
evidence
for
his/her
points.
Focus
especially
on
the
beginnings
and
ends
of
chapters
and
major
sections.
Pay
special
attention
to
the
passages
you
marked
on
the
first
round.
Try
to
answer
any
questions
you
generated
on
the
first
round.
c)
Notes:
recall
and
note-taking
(10-20
percent
of
total
time)
The
purpose
of
your
third
and
final
reading
is
to
commit
to
memory
the
most
important
elements
of
the
book.
This
time,
make
brief
notes
about
the
arguments,
evidence,
and
conclusions.
This
is
not
at
all
the
same
thing
as
text
markup;
your
goal
here
is
to
process
the
material
by
translating
into
your
own
mental
framework,
which
means
using
your
own
words
as
much
as
possible.
Cutting
and
pasting
segments
of
text
from
the
book
will
not
do
as
much
for
you
as
summarizing
very
briefly
in
your
own
words.
Include
the
bare
minimum
of
detail
to
let
you
remember
and
re-locate
the
most
important
things.
1-3
pages
of
notes
per
100
pages
of
text
is
a
good
goal
to
shoot
for;
more
than
that
is
often
too
much.
Use
some
system
that
lets
you
easily
find
places
in
the
book
(e.g.,
start
each
note
with
a
page
number.)
Notebooks,
typed
pages,
or
handwritten
sheets
tucked
into
the
book
can
all
work.
However,
notes
will
be
useless
unless
you
can
easily
find
them
again.
A
very
good
system
the
one
I
use
is
to
type
notes
directly
into
bilbiography
entries
using
citation
manager
software
such
as
Endnote,
Zotero,
or
Bookends.
See
below
for
more
on
citation
managers.
Paul N. Edwards
Specific
General
Paul N. Edwards
You
can
make
the
hourglass
structure
of
writing
do
a
lot
of
work
for
you.
Focus
on
the
following
elements,
in
more
or
less
the
following
order:
Front
and
back
covers,
inner
jacket
flaps
Table
of
contents
Index:
scan
this
to
see
which
are
the
most
important
terms
Bibliography:
tells
you
about
the
books
sources
and
intellectual
context
Preface
and/or
Introduction
and/or
Abstract
Conclusion
Pictures,
graphs,
tables,
figures:
images
contain
more
information
than
text
Chapter
introductions
and
conclusions
Section
headings
Special
type
or
formatting:
boldface,
italics,
numbered
items,
lists
Paul N. Edwards
Markup
on
the
screen:
It
remains
difficult
to
mark
up
screen-based
materials
effectively.
The
extra
steps
involved
are
distracting,
as
is
the
temptation
to
check
email
or
websurf.
Also,
with
screen-based
markup
you
often
have
to
click
on
a
note
in
order
to
read
it,
which
means
youre
less
likely
to
do
it
later.
It
remains
far
easier
to
mark
up
a
printed
copy!
However,
if
youre
disciplined,
recent
versions
of
Acrobat,
Apple
Preview,
and
third-party
PDF
viewers
such
as
PDFpen,
iAnnotate,
and
Goodreader
allow
you
to
add
comments,
highlighting,
and
so
on
to
PDFs.
Voice
recognition
can
make
this
a
lot
easier.
Today,
I
routinely
read
and
annotate
PDFs
on
an
iPad,
using
voice
recognition
when
I
want
to
make
a
note.
Some
of
these
readers,
as
well
as
ebook
readers
such
as
Kindle,
allow
you
to
export
only
your
highlights
and
notes.
This
is
a
great
way
to
make
yourself
a
condensed
version
of
a
document.
Paste
it
into
the
notes
field
of
your
citation
manager
and
itll
always
be
at
your
fingertips.
Hunt
around
on
the
web
for
ways
to
do
this
kind
of
thing
on
an
industrial
scale
(especially
with
Kindle
books).
When
taking
notes
about
something
you're
reading
(as
opposed
to
marking
up
the
text),
you'll
be
tempted
to
cut
and
paste
the
original
text
in
lieu
of
making
your
own
notes
in
your
own
words.
Cut-and-paste
can
sometimes
work
well,
especially
for
things
you
might
want
to
quote
later.
However:
in
general
it
defeats
the
two
main
purposes
of
note-taking:
(a)
learning
and
remembering
(by
rephrasing
in
your
own
terms),
and
(b)
condensing
into
a
very
short
form.
The
same
is
true
of
links:
though
useful
for
keeping
track
of
sources,
keeping
a
URL
will
not
by
itself
help
you
remember
or
understand
what's
there,
even
though
it
may
feel
that
way.
Paul N. Edwards
None
of
these
packages
are
perfect.
All
have
both
advantages
and
disadvantages,
and
the
more
sophisticated
ones
have
steep
learning
curves.
Look
for
one
that
can
handle
all
major
document
formats,
including
books,
journal
articles,
newspaper
articles,
online
sources,
interviews,
and
so
on.
Be
wary
of
managers
that
only
handle
PDFs,
since
so
many
other
formats
are
still
important.
If
you
use
the
notes
field
of
your
citation
manager
in
a
disciplined
way,
your
notes
will
always
be
easy
to
find.
When
your
library
starts
reaching
into
the
thousands
of
items,
this
is
a
godsend.
Hang
in
there!
When
I
give
presentations
on
these
ideas,
students
often
tell
me
a
few
weeks
later
that
they
tried
it
a
few
times
and
just
couldnt
do
it,
so
they
stopped.
Paul N. Edwards
You
will
have
to
practice
these
techniques
for
a
considerable
length
of
time
at
least
a
few
months
before
they
come
to
seem
natural,
and
they
will
never
be
easier
than
the
comfortable,
passive
way
weve
all
been
reading
for
many
years.
Hang
in
there.
The
rewards
of
these
techniques
are
great,
or
so
say
the
hundreds
of
students
whove
told
me
so
years
later.
Learning
to
read
like
this
can
be
a
critical
key
to
a
successful
career
as
a
student,
scholar,
or
professional
in
almost
any
field.
Paul N. Edwards
10
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