Colors in LiquidText

LiquidText is a powerful tool I use to read books I want to take notes from. Among other things, it lets you color‑code your excerpts. I didn’t use this option for a long time because I had no idea how to use colors with excerpts. I’ve been experimenting with this for a while.

Yellow

Yellow is the color I use most often. This color made me start color excerpts.

Sometimes you want to excerpt almost a whole paragraph, with a split into several parts for easier scanning in the future. When reviewing excerpts later, it isn’t easy to see which parts are key. This is where the yellow comes to the rescue.

Also, after some time of using excerpts without colors in LiquidText, I just came across a passage in the book that deserved to be distinguished from the others. This is how I started using colors with my excerpts in the first place.

Red

In red, I mark the excerpts about bad practices and negative consequences.

Cyan & pink

I’m still looking for use‑cases for these colors.

Purple

In purple, I mark the excerpts interesting from a writing point of view, leaving aside what the book is about. Many years ago, Seth Godin wrote a marketing book titled Purple Cow. Every book I read has a passage that makes me think, This is purple writing—I’d love to write like this.

June 5, 2023

Tags: liquidtext, books, colors, pdf, notes, excerpts, highlights