Selected Sentences from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi
A few words about an underappreciated piece of reading technology. Talking about underlining in books.
Nobody shows you how to do this, and it’s a pity. You find out quick that if you do it wrong, you ruin the book. If you do it right, though, you create a precious heirloom.
How do you do it right? Use a ruler, for starters. They make little stubby ones for this purpose. Then there’s the question of where exactly the line should go. Should it touch the bottom of the letters on the line, or should you give it a little space there? Depends.
And then there’s the ink. When I was first underlining, I didn’t understand. You can’t use inks that are gonna show through. Also, you probably don’t want the ink’s color to dominate the page. Bloodred ballpoints are usually too much. The effect can be as bad as that of a highlighter. And you can’t use pens with runny noses that are gonna form solid droplets at their tips. You can’t, unless you like big ol’ gobs
