Highlight evidence and attach memos

Mark passages, add small movable memos, and return to your evidence without changing the original PDF.

Highlight the passage that supports a claim and leave a short memo explaining why it matters. Library annotations belong to your saved PDF; they are not project review comments and are not shared merely because you share a manuscript.

Open a saved PDF in My library first. Sentence selection uses the PDF's text layer, so scanned pages without selectable text need a text-based PDF for this interaction.

Mark a passage#

1. Move the pointer over a sentence. The faint preview shows what a click will select. Check the boundaries before applying a mark.
2. Click to open the radial color menu. Move toward one of the five colors and click to apply it. On a touch screen, tap the text to select a sentence; a press-and-hold keeps native text selection available. The brief flash confirms the highlight action.
3. Click the center cancel control, or elsewhere, to dismiss an unwanted selection without adding a highlight.

PDF text order can be ambiguous around equations, columns, captions, and page breaks. If the sentence preview is wrong, drag across the intended text, release, and choose a color from the selection menu. Automatic selection can fall back to a word; do not assume that a highlight proves CorTeX understood the passage's meaning.

For a methods review, you might use one color for the measurement definition and another for threats to validity. The colors do not assign semantic labels for you: use a consistent convention of your own.

Attach a memo while highlighting#

1. Select the passage and point toward a color in the radial menu.
2. Continue outward in the same direction to reveal the highlight-and-memo action. Choose it to mark the passage and open a small pastel memo nearby.
3. Type a specific reading note, for example: “Compare this sampling interval with our sensor protocol; the evaluation excludes warm-up.”
4. Finish with the memo’s close control, then reopen its speech-bubble marker to confirm the text was saved.

Drag the memo if it covers material you need to read. Finish with Cmd+Enter or Cmd+S on macOS, Ctrl+Enter or Ctrl+S elsewhere, the close control, or a click outside. The memo folds into a small speech-bubble marker beside the passage. Click that marker to reopen it; click again to fold it away.

Choosing highlight-and-memo on a marked passage with an existing memo edits that memo. Finishing with all text removed deletes the memo, while keeping the highlight. Copy any memo text you want to keep before removing it.

If saving has not been confirmed, keep the reader open. Try finishing the memo again or use Try again when shown, and confirm the warning disappears before leaving. A failed save can keep the editor open with your text intact. If a warning says browser storage is unavailable, copy your memo text somewhere safe as well.

Revisit and revise#

Use the highlight markers in the right navigation margin to find saved passages. Choose an entry to scroll to it; the passage flashes briefly after arrival. Hovering a saved highlight also emphasizes its associated memo marker.

Click an existing highlight to reopen its color menu. Use the eraser action to remove it. Erasing removes all page fragments and the associated memo marker from the reader; it does not permanently erase the separately stored note record. The current interface has no independent note-recovery view, so copy important memo text first. To change only a memo’s wording, open the memo instead of erasing the highlight.

The paper details panel also has a Memo field for a summary of the whole paper. It is separate from passage memos: use it for a reading verdict such as “Relevant baseline, but not directly comparable at our sampling rate.”

Export without changing the source#

The original PDF remains unchanged. Finish saving pending memos, then choose Export annotated copy from the reader menu when you need a separate copy with highlights and PDF comment notes. A memo is exported as a PDF note, not as the same floating card you see in CorTeX; its appearance depends on the receiving viewer. Check the downloaded …-annotated.pdf there. An error without a downloaded file means the export has not completed.

Marks belong to a particular PDF edition. Do not assume they will land on the same wording or page in another edition. Keep the original edition when its annotations are important, and verify any transferred marks.

When the evidence is ready to use in a draft, cite the paper from your Library.