Ask Questions and Take Notes
This guide is for work on a passage. You select a span. You highlight it, write a note, or ask a question. At the end the span is saved with your account.
Prerequisites
- You are signed in with your NUU account.
- A surf on the document is completed.
- You can see the passage on a card. Zoom to it first if you need to. See Read by Zooming Through Layers.
A guest on a public reading link can select text, but cannot save notes or questions. Sign in if you want the work to persist.
Select a span
Open the card that holds the passage. Select the wording in the card body. You can take a phrase, a sentence, or several sentences. An action list appears for that span.
If you are in keyboard reading, you can also move by sentence and then open the same actions. See Read with Keyboard Shortcuts.
Highlight the span
Choose highlight when you only need a mark. The span is saved with no title and no body. It stays painted on the card. Open the notes list in the side panel to find it again.
Write a note
Choose a written note when you have your own wording. Give it a title. Write the body. Save it. The originating span stays attached. Open the note later to edit it. Jump from the note back to the span on the canvas.
Draft a note from the span
Choose a drafted note when you want the reader to write the first pass. The reader returns a title, a body, and often extra related spans. Read those related spans. Keep them if they help. Edit the body if the draft is wrong. You can restore a past version if a later edit is worse.
Ask a question
Choose a question when you need an answer about this span, not about the whole document. Type the question. Read the answer. Continue the thread if you need a follow-up.
Ask for a definition when the span is a term. Send the span into a document conversation when you want a longer exchange with more context.
Questions and notes appear in the side panel. Marks on a sentence can point back to them. Use a mark to reopen the thread.
Play the span in firehose
If you want to hear or scan the wording at speed, load firehose from the span. Playback starts at that wording. The card lights the active words. Firehose does not save a note. Stop it when you are done and go back to the canvas.
What you should have
The span is stored as a highlight, a note, or a question. You can find it from the side panel. You can jump back to the painted text. Your notes stay yours. Other readers of the same document do not see them.
For the model, see Spans Notes and Questions.