Do you write in your textbooks?

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tomgosse
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Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby tomgosse » Thu Jun 29, 2017 11:58 am

Greetings all,

My question is, do you write in your textbooks? I have a number of textbooks that have space to answer exercises. Such as, "Je ______ un homme. (être)" I'm always hesitant to write in the book, and usually write my answers in a separate notebook. When I do write in the textbook I feel guilty. There is something about a nice clean book that I enjoy.

What about you? And if you do write in your book, do you use pen (ink) or pencil?

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Re: Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby rdearman » Thu Jun 29, 2017 12:01 pm

I always thought defacing a book is sacrilegious and couldn't bring myself to do it. Still can't stand it now although I do sometimes do write (in pencil) in some exercise books. I've also recently considered ripping apart a parallel text book so that I can have the individual pages, but still haven't managed to bring myself to do it. :)
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Re: Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby blaurebell » Thu Jun 29, 2017 12:15 pm

I use a pencil. I haven't really had much respect for my study books since my childhood, because a book full of underlinings and margin notes can be a thing of beauty too. If I want a pristine copy I just buy a second one. For language learning books I actually tend to never look at them again once I'm done with them. One reason is that I often simply remember them too well, so I need like 5 years minimum before I can do the same drills again without remembering the correct answer. So, no mercy for study books. With my GdUdE workbooks I even take a knife and cut out the pages with the solutions so that I can just put them next to the exercises when making corrections.

That said, I don't normally write in any of my other books and tend to work with stick notes.
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Re: Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby smallwhite » Thu Jun 29, 2017 12:56 pm

Write in a textbook? It's hard enough just to bring myself to write in a new notebook :)

If the exercises are hard and I do need to check the answers, I write on a separate sheet of paper.
If the exercises are easy and I'm really just drilling for automaticity, I answer orally.
Last edited by smallwhite on Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby Ogrim » Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:00 pm

Most of the time I don't, but it is more for practical than esthetic reasons, I find that the space is often too small to write in. I also find it useful to repeat the whole sentence even if they ask for just one word.

Edit: I should add that I aim at a paper-less exsistence to the extent possible, so although I still use the odd physical textbook, I turn more and more to e-books, e-magazines, e-newspapers etc. I also do most of my writing, including notes, exercises, vocabulary lists etc. on my tablet.
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Re: Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby mcthulhu » Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:09 pm

No, even when they are books intended to be written in - I have a few with lots of space for drawing characters for writing practice, but I still can't make myself do it. I just grab some scratch paper instead, since there is always plenty of that lying around.

I had to laugh at smallwhite's comment about writing in new notebooks. I have the same problem, at least with the fancy hardbound ones with designer covers. It's a pleasure to hold and use them, but it always feels wasteful to use them for mere ephemera.
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Re: Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby MamaPata » Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:22 pm

I didn't when I was growing up because I tended to resell my textbooks. Now I absolutely do (but definitely in pencil!) - it's too much of a faff to write out sentences in another notebook. I do have a notebook for my notes, but not really for exercises - I like to be able to work on the bus and to not have to carry all my nonsense around.

(But I also annotate actual books, even in English, so maybe I'm just deeply twisted and there is no real logic to it. :lol: )
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Re: Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby Systematiker » Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:45 pm

For a long time, I wouldn't write in anything. Then I discovered how neat marginalia are, and ever since I've been pretty OK with it. It's also a pretty neat gift to take a clean copy of something meaningful and spend the time annotating it for someone.

Workbooks and such I'll write in if I think I won't do it again, but if I think there's a chance I'll go back and review (or if my wife and I are sharing the book) I'll write on a separate sheet. Like Ogrim, though, I'm mostly digital (more than anything, for reasons of physical space).
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Re: Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby Arnaud » Thu Jun 29, 2017 3:38 pm

No, neither in textbooks nor books. Because I like clean books and because I always resell a part of what I buy: the cleaner the better.
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Re: Do you write in your textbooks?

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Jun 29, 2017 4:10 pm

Depending on the book I will write, underline, draw and otherwise misuse it like a pack of hyenas on a defenceless baby zebra. These I consider exercise books or 'chew to conquer' books. Done once, only by me, and it is a reminder of - hey, you've done this, move on. Pen, pencil, doesn't matter. Sometimes, the same book will get treated with more respect and get loose pages shoved in. But over time, I've discovered that I'm just not going to hunt down that separate notebook I filled with exercises from that other book... Writing in the book in question keeps the material down.

But for the majority of my books, no, not even the binding is cracked, if I can help it. I even have rules about my books - I detest seeing some books in boxes or placed on the ground. My kids will get yelled at for leaving books open face down.

In college, I annotated many of my textbooks which sometimes rendered them unsellable but I enjoy marginalia, particularly when it is not necessarily relevant to the book content - location, events, life notes...
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