---
title: "Highlighting text in drafts"
url: https://perrotta.dev/2025/10/highlighting-text-in-drafts/
last_updated: 2025-10-31
---


When editing complex documents that warrant multiple revisions (iterations) and
peer reviews, it is often helpful to make prominent distinctions within
sentences, in order to track **authorship** and **readiness**.

I enjoy making such distinctions by using the color highlighting[^1] feature of
the document / text app at hand (e.g. Google Docs, LibreOffice). Light colors
are visually the best, and they are less distracting.

Authorship (or provenance) tracks who wrote what. Different people should
have distinct colors assigned to each.

Readiness correlates to the number of revisions a given word or sentence has
undergone through. For example, use yellow for early drafts and shallow
brainstorming, orange for work-in-progress, and green for final revisions.

It is much easier to visually keep track of the document evolution when doing
so.

[^1]: In some situations, **bolding** or <u>underlining</u> is also helpful.