Suggestions for organized notes and highlights in scriptures?

[CheetohBugeetoh]

Hello! This is my first time posting in the forum but I thought it to be important in this case.

I was given a quad by my father from his mission that he used many years ago, he has his own highlights and small little notes written on the margins, but I also feel prompted to go through it and add some of my own. Does anyone have a preferred way that they highlight verses and write notes in the scriptures? It can be a digital or physical system, especially if it is color-based since I have more of a photographic memory. (Ie: Red highlights = commandments, green highlights = favorite scriptures.) It can be any color = any meaning.

I have looked online and often find the ones online a bit too overwhelming, and still want to be able to provide enough simplicity that I can pass it on to my posterity so they can go through it themselves and add onto it.

On the other hand, at the same time, whatever I am highlighting on the physical copy, I am highlighting also on my digital scriptures, too, during my studies, with more depth added to the digital copy since I can add anything I want and not have to rely on whatever space the margins give me.

Any suggestions?

[CheetohBugeetoh]

Hi again! I forgot to mention that I am an 18 year old woman studying Doctrine and Covenants and so far it has only strengthened my testimony, so as you can imagine, I have need for a lot of highlights.

[liamtheknight@hotmail.com]

As a current missionary, I faced a similar problem when I started to read all 4 standard works so I developed a system with 8 different categories (probably could be cut down to 4 but I like my notes). The first 5 I highlight with colored pencils since I don't really write next to them. The last 3 I do in highlighter so I can easier see them when skimming through my scriptures. The colour's don't really matter so change them as you see fit.

Colored pencils
1. Doctrine or principles of the church (purple)
2. Good advice or teachings to follow (Orange)
3. Uplifting or motivating scriptures (Teal)
4. Advice or teaching specific to a certain calling. Mine is missionary work (Blue)
5. Spiritual experience for the person in the scriptures. Eg Visions, prophecies, dreams... (Red)
Highlighters
6. Personal note. , with writing in the margins (Neon orange)
7. Assisted notes. Eg from the institute manuals or historical/traditional information, mostly used for the Bible (Neon Yellow)
8. Historical, geographical or other non-spiritual interesting info. Eg, names, places and details (Neon Green)

If you desire too, you could probably just cut it down to 1, 2, 3 and 6. For my missionary scriptures I have the colour's and what they mean in the front page of both my Bible and Triple Combination. Hopefully this was able to help you a little!

[BrianEdwards]

I'd also advocate for simplicity not only in how you mark, but in the purpose of your highlights. Primarily because the more I delve into the scriptures, the more meanings I find for even simple verses, and it can be overwhelming to determine how to highlight a verse that has Doctrine, and Advice, and Motivation, etc. Please don't worry that your plan for highlights isn't "sufficiently capturing everything" -- even our Apostles have shared that they benefit from focused study and focused highlighting of the scriptures.

I love my mission Book of Mormon highlights for many reasons. One is that I had a couple of specific goals in mind for my BofM study, and I was consistent in highlighting those aspects even when there were lots of other things I could have considered. Looking back at this a few decades later, my highlights still bring those impressions back to me in a cohesive way.