Highlighting vs Tagging vs Journaling

Before deciding what to mark in your Bible, it helps to understand the different ways you can record what you notice. Three of the most common approaches are highlighting, tagging, and journaling. They can be used separately, but they also work very well together.

The important distinction is that these methods serve slightly different purposes. Highlighting draws your attention directly to the words of Scripture. Tagging gives those observations a category or label, making it easier to recognize patterns and return to related passages. Journaling gives you space to think beyond the text itself—to record your questions, reflections, interpretations, prayers, and applications. None of these methods is inherently better than the others. The best choice depends on what you want your notes to accomplish.

Highlighting

Highlighting is perhaps the simplest way to annotate Scripture. You mark a word, phrase, sentence, or passage that you consider significant, allowing it to stand out whenever you return to the page.

You might highlight:

• Something you want to remember
• A verse that speaks to you personally
• An important teaching
• A command or instruction
• A promise
• A warning
• Something about God's character
• Something you do not understand
• A passage you want to study further
• A verse you want to memorize

Some people use one color for everything they find important, while others assign different colors to different categories. For example, blue might represent passages about God, yellow might represent teachings, and green might represent promises.

The advantage of highlighting is its simplicity. You do not need to stop and write a long explanation every time something catches your attention. A single mark can be enough to tell your future self, “Pay attention to this.”

However, highlighting can also become excessive. If nearly everything is highlighted, nothing stands out anymore. There is no need to mark every interesting sentence simply because you can. Highlight what you genuinely want to be able to find again.

Some methods of highlighting

Tagging

Tagging is similar to highlighting, but instead of—or in addition to—marking the passage visually, you assign it a category.

For example, you might tag a passage as:

• PRAYER
• FAITH
• SIN
• GRACE
• GOD
• JESUS
• HOLY SPIRIT
• WISDOM
• PROPHECY
• COMMAND
• PROMISE
• WARNING

Tags can be written in the margins, represented by symbols, attached as tabs, recorded in a notebook, or used as labels in a digital Bible or note-taking system.

The greatest strength of tagging is that it allows you to trace a subject across Scripture. Instead of remembering only that you once read an interesting passage about forgiveness, you can create a FORGIVENESS tag and gradually collect passages related to it.

Tagging can therefore be particularly useful for people who enjoy studying themes, doctrines, recurring ideas, characters, or biblical concepts.

You also do not need to create dozens of tags immediately. In fact, starting with too many categories can make Bible study unnecessarily complicated. Begin with the things you naturally find yourself looking for, and expand your system only when you have a reason to.

Related: What to highlight or tag

Journaling

Journaling moves beyond marking the biblical text and gives you a place to respond to it.

A journal entry might contain:

• What you noticed
• What you think the passage means
• Questions you have
• Connections to other passages
• Historical or cultural observations
• Personal reflections
• Something you feel convicted about
• Something you are grateful for
• A lesson you want to remember
• A practical application
• A prayer inspired by the passage

Journaling is especially useful when you want to slow down and think deeply about what you have read. Unlike a highlight or tag, a journal entry can preserve the thought process you went through while studying a passage.

For example, highlighting a verse about loving your enemies tells you that the verse was important. Tagging it as LOVE tells you why you may want to find it again. Journaling about the difficulty of actually loving someone who has hurt you allows you to record what the verse made you think about and how you intend to respond to it.

You can combine them

These methods are not competing systems. You can use all three in the same study.

For example:

Highlight: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Tag: LOVE · PRAYER · COMMAND
Journal: This is much harder for me than simply forgiving someone. What would it actually mean to pray for someone I resent?

Each method has captured something different:

Highlighting → What caught my attention?
Tagging → What category does this belong to?
Journaling → What do I think, understand, question, or do about it?

You can use one, two, or all three. You might even use different methods for different books of the Bible or different seasons of your life.

The purpose is not to create the most sophisticated annotation system possible. The purpose is to create a way of recording Scripture that helps you notice, understand, remember, reflect upon, and return to what you have read.

Other note-taking methods

These methods can also be incorporated to your journaling. I just find that these may not necessarily be under the journaling approach.

In relation to the many ways you can go about your bible study and reading, there are also many ways you can organize these. And so, I would encourage you to check the next part of the guide which is linked below.

Related: Ways to organize my bible study notes