Underlining and highlighting have a mechanical failure for recall — they do not exercise the output circuits even once.

Instead, if you want to remember the thought you were about to highlight or underline, write it out long hand, and from short term memory not copying rote, in a note book.

This exercises the full path: reading, comprehension, decision you’ll need to recall, storage, retrieval, and output from mental storage back into physical world.

Plus, the notebook then provides a hook for refreshing the information geography in your storage. Reskim the notes and you refresh the larger narrative and how it hangs together. Revisit the notebook on a periodically decreasing interval, you’ll still recall the narrative decades later.