Hey, Someone Left You a Note! It’s an Annotation

At HackerNoon we appreciate the power of team work and communication. And as our evergreen community constantly grows, we are motivated to find more creative ways to enhance the connection between writers.

You ready? Drum rolls

GIVE IT UP FOR… ANNOTATIONS!

As the name suggests, the annotation feature is a note of explanation or a comment added to a portion i.e. a text or phrase in your article. Like a sticky note, annotated parts in an article are highlighted yellow. Click on them, and the notes/comments/annotations will appear on the right side of your monitor as you scroll through the story.

Oh and don’t worry, unlike a sticky note, you can choose to close annotations anytime you like!

It’s a great way to increase interactions and collaborations between writers. Why? Well because anyone can leave annotations on any article. Yes, ANYONE, author or not!

Reading your published article and see a part that needs clarification? - ANNOTATION!

Pondering on a story, seeing an interesting phrase that you want to commend or give a remark on? - ANNOTATION!

There’s no character limit on the number of words you can highlight for annotations. But surely, we (and the authors) don’t want yellow highlights on a whole paragraph, hell, even the whole story! Thus, every submitted annotation will be examined closely by writer themselves of the editorial team (so you better bring your A-game when using this feature!).

However, there’s a limit on how much you can write for each annotation, just like sticky notes. For now, we have kept it at 360 characters.

How Do We Annotate?

Annotations work quite similar to quote image sharing. Here are the steps:

• Highlight the word(s)/phrase that you find interesting, or simply the part where you just want to contribute a small piece of information to.

• The same moment you highlight the text, you’ll see 3 icons pop up. Look at the pen on the left, it’s the annotation badge.

• Click on it and type away… as long as it does not exceed 360 characters.

• Submit and wait for an editor to review and approve your annotation.

• You can find people's annotations near the comments tab for editors or on the sub-nav of your writers’ page.

  
  

And vòila! If your annotation gets approved, you (and everyone) will know. But if it didn’t make it, don’t worry, only you’d know.

What’s The Difference Between Annotations And Comments?

While the concept might be similar as they’re both ways to increase interactions on site, and contributions under either comments or annotations all need to be reviewed by a human editor; annotation is arguably more collaborative.

As annotating can be considered to be a contribution to an already published story, collaborative level is high, at the same time, submitted annotations should be of top quality.

That’s all! Happy annotating hackers!