For many students out there you surely read a lot of pdf’s right on your screen. When reading screen text we often want to highlight text in yellow. Most of the time this isn’t a problem. However, depending on the page you might experience difficulties. First in multi-column pages many pdf readers can not tell the difference between one column or the other, so when you try to highlight the left column and drag your cursor down the page the program also highlights your right column.
A way to get around this annoyance is to use the ALT-select method. Place your cursor near the beginning of the text you wish to highlight. Press the ALT key. You will see the cross hair cursor appear. Hold down the ALT key and drag the select tool across the text you wish to highlight. If you have previously clicked the highlight tool then many programs will automatically highlight the selected text. If not, then click the highlight tool once the selected text is grayed-out. The selected text should appear yellow. That’s it. This little trick should save you many a hassle and headache. Remember to save your document before closing or you’ll lose your highlights!
One thing to note is that Adobe Reader doesn’t let you highlight most pdf’s, so you need to find an open source one. There are many out there. Even though Macs come with a built-in pdf reader Mac users might want to look at “Skim”. It is suppose to be the best in breed.
