Best Practices in PDF Reading and Annotation
Prepare Acrobat: Right click the
Quick Tools Bar (or click the Quick
Tools icon) to add annotation tools.
Add the tools you see on the toolbar at
the right – highlight, text box, callout,
cross out, line, overstrike.
Change Acrobat Preferences (Edit menu) to copy selected text into comment popups. This
makes comments easier to find and review.
Annotate and Correct: Annotate all PDF case papers you read in
electronic form using Acrobat annotation tools. See Adobe’s
annotations and drawing markup tools overview. Preferred annotation
methods are highlighting, text boxes and graphics such as boxes or
lines. Sticky Notes are not preferred. Correct erroneous bookmarks,
and add bookmarks for important arguments or other subtopics. Try
not to cover the headers or text with text boxes.
Be sparing on highlighting, selecting pertinent words or phrases rather
than entire paragraphs. This ensures that the tools for finding
annotations and the annotation summaries are brief and useful.
When comparing multiple documents in a package remember to
Open a New Window to see them side by side. This allows review of
Reply and Opposition memoranda at the same time.
Send corrections and suggestions to
[email protected] Rev. 08/26/13
