Pay Attention to Me!

A Public Service Essay by Chris Condon

This post's title, in a nutshell, is what a highlighter's mission statement is. You call in a highlighter to do what normal ink cannot: separate the important and newsworthy from the run of the mill, mundane scribbles that grace your paper. Even the best writers know that only a very small percentage of what makes it to the notebook is worthy of recognition. This is why we do not use the highlighter to scribe our thoughts outright. For those who think so highly of themselves to attempt such a feat, they are left with a colorful, unintelligble paper scrap that serves no better purpose than refrigerator art. So now that you know not to write in highlighter, let's also try and allow you to avoid another common trap.

In my sophomore year Comparative Politics class (that's GOVT 203 for all you aspiring PolySci majors out there), there was a girl who sat on the far right by the wall. Dave, who served as my wingman for that class, was very quick to notice that this girl did not subscribe to our brand of note-taking methodology. While Dave and I wrote down only the important in our notebooks, while saving ample margin space to sketch absurdist humor and silliness, this girl, whose known first name was Wendy, insisted on setting her pen to Mach 3 and transcribing every thing that came out of Professor Baxter's mouth. (Wait, there's more!) And after getting it all down in blue ink, she would instantly switched gears and paint her paper with a furious flurry of electric green and fluorescent yellow. Trust me, her notebook looked like the child of SpongeBob and the Kellogg Smacks Frog. And Wendy Highlighter was never heard from again.

The reason we spend this afternoon on the highlighting topic is not because of any problem or bone to pick with the writing utensil in question. It serves as the Issue du Jour only because of my frequent use to get me through the final two weeks of Fiscal Year End. (FY05...it's faaaaaaaaan-tastic.) It seems that highlighters also have a way of multiplying. Like any other cubicle dweller, my desk attempts to maintain some semblance of order. One such order-taker is a cup used to hold all the pens and pencils to my name. When I'm finished with my Pepermate Flexgrip or my Dixon Ticonderoga, I'm pretty good and returning them to their proper home. I wish the same were true for highlighters. They're everywhere.

Unless you're bored and in 3rd grade, you will never use more than 1 highlighter at a time. Sure, different colors may means different things, but the whole hand-gripping-pen-to-transfer-ink-to-paper system only works well with one highlighter in hand. When I asked our staff assistant to order me a highlighter back in October, I assumed I would become the soon-proud owner of a standard yellow, no frills, no friends.

Wrong, Condon.

Yep, I've got a six pack. A whole array of colors to choose from to emphasize words and phrases. And upon further inspection, I think each of the six colors serve a specific purpose. And since it just so happens I'm in the "Write down random stuff and call it a Blog" business, I thought I'd share.

YELLOW is classic. It's a great contrast on white, and it's the first color an editor will look for. Always reliable, that yellow. It's the E.R. of the set. Solid results every week.

ORANGE is the edgy, more noticeable alternative to the yellow. I often use orange when I want to highlight something that a reader my find alarming. For example, if I had to include the line "For the Super Bowl, Chris Berman intends to wear a suit Michael Irvin picked out," that's got orange coming to it.

GREEN is what I use to draw attention to things that make me happy. It's the anti-orange.

PINK is, um, well, the color I use to, um, well, keep the red pen and the scissors company in the utensil holder. Never. Been. Used.

PURPLE has never been used here at the C.A.O.'s desk, if for no other reason than a photocopy will turn the important into unreadable blackmarks. Count on purple if you want to give the off the mystique that all of your writings are classified.

BLUE is the best invisible ink I know. Like whiting-out something you wrote on the chalkboard. Brilliant.