good news, bad news

[cellio]

Background: Often, the publishers of a prayer book also publish a "pulpit edition", a larger copy with larger type but otherwise identical. A few times I have noticably stumbled when leading morning services; it's obvious to everyone that the regular siddur is right at the limits of my vision (as modified by available lighting). A few weeks ago I casually asked if we were going to buy a pulpit edition and I was told one didn't exist yet. We have a "pulpit copy" of the regular edition that's been marked up with highlighter pen, but the first time I tried to use it I found that the highlighting caused problems for me (too dark, so reduced contrast making it harder to read the text). I made a comment to that effect and ever since have used a regular copy. It's not like I don't know all the cues by now anyway.

So, this morning I was surprised to find, when I got onto the bimah, a shiny new pulpit edition in the larger size. Woot! I opened it up to a random page and marvelled at the crisp, clear, Hebrew. This would make it much easier for me. The joy was short-lived, though; I turned to the beginning of the morning service to find that someone had highlighted all the leader's parts in blue. That's even worse than the pink they used previously. And even with the larger print size, it looked dicey and I didn't use it for fear of making mistakes. Some of those blue sections were dark -- even in the English I would have had trouble in places, let alone the Hebrew.

I really really hope that this is something they were going to get anyway, and that they didn't specifically get a book for my use and then mark it up in a way that makes it unusable for me. I would feel bad about causing them that expense, even though the markup isn't my doing and I would have said something if I'd known. Other people will certainly get use out of it; I only lead one morning a week, after all. But... ack.

For the record: if text must be highlighted directly, yellow is best. But better than marking over the text is to put highlighting (of any color) in the margins, with a tick next to the first word if that's ambiguous. The only time I've marked up a leader's copy of a siddur that's what I did, and it worked fine. (And, by the way: orange. When it's not going over text it's better for it to be a nice obvious color.)

Comments

[cellio]

I occasionally write in books, but it's usually to add cross-references, not to highlight or further annotate the text. For example, in the book I learned trope from, for the tropes that only occur two or three times in the entire torah I've added those cites when I've bumped into them, 'cause it seems like something useful to know. Or if a commentary says something like "Rashi says X" and I went and looked it up, I may add a margin note about where Rashi says X so I never have to do that detective work again. That sort of thing.

Oh, one exception to "occasionally": I have no reservations at all about writing in cookbooks. If I find after making the recipe a few times that I need to add more $SPICE or grease the pan (when it wasn't specified) or cook 5 minutes fewer than the recipe calls for, I'll write that in. Cookbooks are closer to compilations of notes than to reference books, most of the time. (Exceptions are things like Cookwise, which I have never written in and probably wouldn't.)

I never highlight for emphasis, and especially not on a first reading. Until you've digested the material you don't really know what's going to end up being important, after all. In college some of my classmates would use highlighter pen in their texts and end up with 50% coverage when they were going for 5%, because they marked things as they read them. I think that actually detracts from the usefulness of the book, and when buying used texts it's something I looked for.

But, all that said, I'd be hesitant to mark up a siddur that's not a one-shot (special service etc). Who knows what your customs will be ten years from now?