An everyday and social action, annotation—the act of adding a note to a text—provides knowledge, communicates opinion, initiates dialogue, conveys emotion, and facilitates learning. It aids in bridging the gap between reading and writing. This volume of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series provides an introduction to annotation and its literary, academic, civic, and everyday significance in historical and contemporary contexts. It considers annotation as a genre, a combination of reading, thinking, writing, and communication, and provides instances of annotation ranging from medieval rubrication and early book culture to data labeling and internet reviews.
