Does highlighting help you study? Mostly not, the way most students use it. In a review of ten study techniques, John Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rated highlighting low utility: in most studies it did no better than reading alone. It helps a little when you read first, mark very little and turn each mark into a question you answer with the book closed, because the answering is where the learning happens.
Below is what the research on highlighting found, and a five-step way to turn a highlighted page into questions you answer with the book closed.
It's the night before the exam and the chapter is mostly yellow. You go through it again, line by line, and every marked sentence looks familiar. Then the first question asks why something happens, and the sentence you need isn't anywhere in your head. One student on r/GetStudying described hours of "just reading and re-reading books, yet I don't understand a thing or have no idea what to say when the professor or anyone else asks me about the material" (thread). Another put it in a line: "I read it, reread it, recognize it but the second I try to recall it…" (thread).
The highlighter told you what mattered, and then never asked you to say any of it back.
Does highlighting help you study, according to the studies?
Mostly it does little, with a few useful exceptions. Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) put it plainly: "In most situations that have been examined and with most participants, highlighting does little to boost performance." They added two cases where it may help, when students know enough to pick the right lines and when the text is difficult, and one where it may hurt: tasks that need an inference.
A classic experiment shows both sides. Fowler and Barker (1974) gave undergraduates about 8,000 words of magazine articles and an hour to study them. Some only read, some highlighted as they liked, and some read a copy someone else had highlighted. A week later, after a short review, everyone took a multiple-choice test. Neither highlighting group beat the students who only read. Inside the test, though, the highlighters did better on questions about the lines they had marked and a little worse on the rest.
The reason is the catch. A marked line stands out the way one odd word stands out in a list, and distinctive things are easier to remember, so you keep a little more of the marked lines and a little less of everything else. Mark everything and nothing stands out. Rickards and August (1975) limited students to underlining one sentence per paragraph, and those students later recalled more of a science text than students who didn't underline at all.
The cost shows up when the question needs a link between ideas. In a study by Peterson (1992), education majors spent 90 minutes on a 10,000-word history chapter; two groups underlined, one only read. A week later the groups scored the same on the factual questions, and the students who had underlined and then reviewed their marked copy did worse on the questions that needed an inference across the chapter. It is one study, not yet repeated, but it fits the mechanism: a mark points at a single sentence, and an inference lives between sentences.
The most recent synthesis tells the same story. Ponce, Mayer and Méndez (2022) pooled 36 published studies from 1938 to 2019. Highlighting that students did themselves improved memory for the material but not comprehension, and it helped college students, not school students. Highlighting done by an instructor helped both.
The details hold some good news. Miyatsu, Nguyen and McDaniel (2018) found several studies in which training as short as an hour made marking work, and the programs shared one rule: no marking on the first read. They also found that going back over the marks later added nothing to the benefit of marking. So the useful part of highlighting is the choosing, done once and done well. The rereading most students do afterwards isn't where the learning happens.
| Study | What it found | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Fowler and Barker (1974) | No overall gain; marked lines remembered a little better, the rest a little worse | Your marks decide what you keep |
| Rickards and August (1975) | One sentence per paragraph beat no underlining | Mark less |
| Peterson (1992) | Same on facts, worse on inferences | Marks miss the links between ideas |
| Ponce, Mayer and Méndez (2022) | Own marks helped memory, not comprehension; college, not school | Expect help with recall, not understanding |
| Miyatsu, Nguyen and McDaniel (2018) | Training helped; rereading the marks added nothing | Choose after a first read, then stop rereading |
Why does a highlighted page feel like you know it?
Because rereading it is a recognition test, and you pass. Every marked sentence is familiar, and familiar feels like known. An exam asks you to produce the sentence, or to use it, with nothing on the desk to recognise.
Most students study this way anyway. When Karpicke, Butler and Roediger (2009) surveyed 177 college students about how they study, most said they reread their notes or textbook, and relatively few tested themselves. The authors' explanation was illusions of competence: the reading feels like progress, so there is no signal to stop.
Testing yourself is the signal. Across a large meta-analysis, Adesope, Trevisan and Sundararajan (2017) found that practice tests helped learning more than restudying the same material. Highlighting isn't harmful in itself; Dunlosky's review says its real cost is the time it takes from strategies that work better. The steps below keep the part of highlighting that helps, the choosing, and spend the rest of the time on questions.
How do you turn highlighting into studying?
Use it on one section at a time, about 45 minutes for a dense one. You need the text, one highlighter, a pencil and a blank sheet.
Step 1: Read the section once with the highlighter capped (10 minutes)
Read the whole section before you mark anything. You can't tell which sentence carries a paragraph until you know where the section is going, which is why the marking-training studies Miyatsu and colleagues reviewed held marking back until after a first read.
You're done when you could say in one sentence what the section is about. The usual mistake is marking the first definition you meet, before you know whether it matters.
Step 2: Mark one sentence per paragraph, at most (5 minutes)
Go back and mark the one sentence each paragraph can't do without: the claim, the definition or the cause the rest explains. In a paragraph made of definitions, mark the terms, not every sentence. One sentence per paragraph is the limit Rickards and August used; it forces the choice that makes marking useful.
Check it by covering the paragraph: the marked sentence should let you rebuild the rest. A page that is more than a quarter yellow means the choosing was put off, not done.
Step 3: Turn each mark into a question in the margin (10 minutes)
Next to each mark, write the question the sentence answers. "Sensor: monitors a physiological value" becomes "What does a sensor do?" Write the question, never the answer.
Every mark ends up with a question beside it. Copying the sentence into the margin doesn't count; that's rereading in different ink.
Step 4: Add one question that links two marks (5 minutes)
Write at least one question no single mark answers: how two marked ideas connect, what would happen if one changed, why the second follows from the first. This is the part highlighting skips. Peterson's underliners lost marks on exactly these questions.
A real link question needs two marked sentences and a step of your own. If you can answer it by pointing at one line, it isn't one yet.
Step 5: Close the book, answer, check, and come back (15 minutes)
Cover the text, answer every margin question on the blank sheet, then open the book and grade yourself line by line. Circle what was missing. That is active recall, and your marks decided what it covers.
Answer the same questions again in two or three days and in a week, writing first and checking second. Spaced repetition is the same habit run by software. You're done with the section when you can answer the link question cold.
Short on time? Your chapter is probably highlighted already. Skip steps 1 and 2, and run steps 3 to 5 on the marks you have, one section at a time: about 20 minutes.
What does this look like on a real page?
Take the paragraph on negative feedback in section 1.5 of Anatomy and Physiology 2e, the free OpenStax textbook (Betts and colleagues, 2022). It opens: "A negative feedback system has three basic components." Then it defines them. "A sensor, also referred to a receptor, is a component of a feedback system that monitors a physiological value." "The control center is the component in a feedback system that compares the value to the normal range." "An effector is the component in a feedback system that causes a change to reverse the situation and return the value to the normal range."
The paragraph has six sentences, and the usual highlighter marks all six. Everything in it looks like something the test could ask.
Step 2. It's a paragraph of definitions, so mark the three terms: sensor, control center, effector.
Step 3. Three margin questions. What does a sensor do? What does the control center compare? What does an effector do?
Step 4. One link question, using the book's own example a few lines down. As blood glucose falls back toward normal, insulin release stops. What noticed the drop, and why does that make this negative feedback?
Try the link question before you read on.
Step 5. Here is an answer someone who marked the paragraph might write: "It's negative because too much sugar is bad, and insulin gets rid of the bad thing."
It sounds reasonable, and it reads "negative" as "bad". The marks didn't cover the word, because the meaning sits in a different paragraph. Earlier in the section the book defines it: "Negative feedback is a mechanism that reverses a deviation from the set point." The glucose example then says what stops the response: "As glucose concentration in the bloodstream drops, the decrease in concentration—the actual negative feedback—is detected by pancreatic alpha cells, and insulin release stops." So "negative" means the response pushes the value back the other way, and the change it causes is what switches it off. The section draws the contrast itself: "Positive feedback intensifies a change in the body's physiological condition rather than reversing it."
The three definitions answered the three fact questions. Only the link question showed that the mechanism was missing, and it was missing in a fully highlighted paragraph. Getting it wrong on a sheet at your desk shows you where to read again, before an exam question does.
When is highlighting the right tool, and when is this the wrong tool?
Highlighting has real uses, and these steps don't fit every situation.
- You need to find things again. For an open-book exam or a reference you'll come back to, marks help you locate a line. That's navigation, not studying, and it works fine.
- You're learning terms and definitions. Miyatsu and colleagues note marking can help you remember the marked information itself, which suits vocabulary, though it shouldn't be your only preparation for problem-solving.
- It's your first contact with the topic. With little background you can't tell which sentence matters, as Dunlosky's review points out. Read the section through, and use step 4 later, once you know more.
- You're in school, not college. In the studies above, students younger than college age didn't benefit from their own marking without training. Teacher-marked text helped them more.
- It's the night before the exam. Skip the marking. Write the questions straight from the headings and answer them.
How do you check what your highlights covered, in Ritsu?
Step 4 is the hard one to do alone. You write questions about what you marked, so the gaps sit exactly where you didn't think to ask, and you grade your own answers against the page, where it's easy to read what you meant rather than what you wrote. The worked example above stayed wrong until a question reached past the marks.
Bloom Test, one of Ritsu's standalone tools, writes those questions from your file instead, so they don't depend on what you happened to mark. Its page describes it in one line: "Upload something you've studied. Ritsu writes questions that climb from recall to reasoning, then shows where your understanding holds and where it breaks."
We have no video of a Bloom Test run yet, so the clips below come from a Ritsu walkthrough on a physics chapter, not the page above. The same idea runs through a normal Ritsu study session, which records each activity at its Bloom level. In the first clip, the questions answered in one session are sorted by the kind of thinking they asked for, "so I can see which kinds of thinking the session has actually asked me to do, not just how many activities I completed."
1. Upload the chapter you highlighted. Bloom Test sits on the Learning Tools page with the other standalone tools. Upload the file you studied from.
2. Choose the levels. Pick Remember, Understand and Apply to start: five questions for each level you pick, 15 in all. Objective questions are graded by fixed rules, written answers against an answer key and rubric grounded in your material.
3. Read the report, then practise the gap. It names the checkpoints you met, partly met or missed. On the negative-feedback paragraph, the three definitions are Remember questions; "why does insulin release stop?" sits higher, where the marks ran out. A miss at Remember means the marks never turned into recall; a miss higher up means the links were never made. In a study session, match the action to the gap. As the video puts it: "If I think I know it, I should try to retrieve it." /askme asks you a question and waits for your answer.
Every question shows the page of your file it came from, and spaced review brings what you studied back later. There's no timer, and the result is not an exam prediction; the page says so itself: "It measures the gap. It doesn't close it." A full test needs a free account, and the 7-question sample check on its page needs nothing.
Start with the 7-question sample on the page, which needs no upload and no account, then run the full test on the chapter you highlighted last and see which level your marks carried you to. Test My Understanding
FAQ
Q: Is highlighting a good way to study?
Not on its own. Reviews of the research rate it low utility because most studies found no benefit over simply reading the text. It can help when you mark very little, after a first read, and then test yourself on what you marked, with the book closed.
Q: Is rereading an effective way to study?
Rereading feels productive but checks nothing: it makes material familiar without showing whether you can recall or use it. A second read helps when you missed something the first time. After that, closing the book and recalling, explaining or solving a problem is what shows, and builds, what you really know.
Q: How much should you highlight?
Very little: about one sentence per paragraph, or just the key terms in a paragraph of definitions. Marking more makes each mark less distinctive and puts off the decision about what matters. If you can't choose, read the section again before you mark.
Q: Is highlighting better than taking notes?
Both can turn into copying. What matters is whether you produce something from memory afterwards. Notes written in your own words with the book closed ask more of you than a highlight, and questions in the margin ask more than either. Explaining the idea aloud without the page, then checking, goes one step further.
Q: What is the illusion of competence?
The illusion of competence is feeling that you know something because it looks familiar. Rereading, highlighting and following a worked solution all create it. The test is to close the source and produce the answer yourself; if you can't explain it or solve a new problem, the familiarity was not understanding.
Q: Do highlights someone else made help?
They can. In Ponce, Mayer and Méndez's (2022) meta-analysis, highlighting done by an instructor helped both memory and comprehension, while students' own highlighting helped memory only. A good instructor picks better lines than most students do. A used textbook's highlights are a different matter: you don't know who made them.
Q: Can Ritsu show me what my highlights missed?
Yes, with Bloom Test. Upload the chapter you studied and it writes questions from recall to reasoning, grades your answers and reports which checkpoints you met, partly met or missed. A free account is enough, and the sample check on its page needs no upload.
The takeaway
Keep the highlighter for choosing, then put the yellow away and answer questions about it with the book closed.
Take the chapter you marked most heavily this term, upload it to Bloom Test, and see whether your understanding holds past the first level. Test My Understanding
Sources
- Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659–701. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316689306
- Betts, J. G., Young, K. A., Wise, J. A., Johnson, E., Poe, B., Kruse, D. H., Korol, O., Johnson, J. E., Womble, M., & DeSaix, P. (2022). Anatomy and Physiology 2e, section 1.5: Homeostasis. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/anatomy-and-physiology-2e/pages/1-5-homeostasis (read 2026-10-19)
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266
- Fowler, R. L., & Barker, A. S. (1974). Effectiveness of highlighting for retention of text material. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59(3), 358–364. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0036750
- Karpicke, J. D., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L., III. (2009). Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practise retrieval when they study on their own? Memory, 17(4), 471–479. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658210802647009
- Miyatsu, T., Nguyen, K., & McDaniel, M. A. (2018). Five popular study strategies: Their pitfalls and optimal implementations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(3), 390–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617710510
- Peterson, S. E. (1992). The cognitive functions of underlining as a study technique. Reading Research and Instruction, 31(2), 49–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/19388079209558078
- Ponce, H. R., Mayer, R. E., & Méndez, E. E. (2022). Effects of learner-generated highlighting and instructor-provided highlighting on learning from text: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 34(2), 989–1024. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09654-1
- Rickards, J. P., & August, G. J. (1975). Generative underlining strategies in prose recall. Journal of Educational Psychology, 67(6), 860–865. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.67.6.860
By Ritsu Team · Last updated October 19, 2026
