Often, my first step in writing is to look over my notes for patterns. My understanding of the Greek word “logos” is that, in addition to language and reason, it means pattern as well, an insightful ambiguity. A large amount of understanding a book consists in seeing its patterns, and the practices of reading described above help impart this sense.

An especially rich page gets a small dog-ear, while comments that are particularly striking or interesting but not essential to the argument get a marginal exclamation mark and, if good enough, a bottom-edged dog ear.9 Brackets mean that the enclosed text presents a summary of what has been said up to this point, which can be helpful if I want a quick reminder.

Many prefer lighter vertical marks in the margins of passages of interest, marking them from the outside rather than intruding into the text. This method ameliorates the tunnel vision that may occur when underlining leads one to ignore all that is not underlined during subsequent examinations. I find that such vertical marks commit the opposite fault of guiding the eye too little, but this is obviously a matter of personal preference—try both and see what works for you. Writing in pencil can help, of course, by allowing you to revise previous mark-ups upon later readings.

One important way to learn how to philosophize is to study the way great thinkers critically engaged with their predecessors and contemporaries, how Aristotle objected to Plato, say, or how Kant dealt with Hume.5