ReadingRate · Answers · 2026
What's the easiest way to save quotes from a book?
Underlining is the fastest thing to do in the moment and the least useful afterwards, because a pencil mark isn't searchable and you forget what you marked within weeks. Typing a passage out is accurate but awkward while holding a book open. The two practical alternatives are photographing the page so the marked text is extracted for you, and reading the passage aloud to be transcribed. ReadingRate does both.
The problem with saving quotes isn't deciding what's worth keeping — it's that every method of keeping it competes with reading, and reading wins. Anything that takes more than a few seconds simply doesn't get done.
So the useful comparison isn't which method is most thorough. It's which one you'll still be doing in month three.
Disclosure: we make ReadingRate. This page says what the feature can't do as well as what it can.
Four ways to save a passage, compared
Underlining or highlighting
Instant, and it keeps you in the book. But it isn't searchable, it isn't sorted, and a few months on you won't remember which passages you marked or why. It records that something mattered without recording what.
Typing it out
Accurate and searchable, but physically awkward — one hand holding the book open against its own spine while the other types. It's the method people describe using and quietly abandon.
Photographing the page
Fast and hands-free. ReadingRate's iOS app can read a photo of a page and pull out specifically the passages you underlined or highlighted, rather than the whole page. On the web, a photo is transcribed as full page text.
Reading it aloud
Tap the mic and speak the passage. It's transcribed, then corrected against the book's own text so proper nouns and punctuation come out right. Saying a line aloud also tends to fix it in memory better than marking it silently.
Watch instead
Why underlining fails, and a walkthrough of saving a passage by speaking it aloud — including the proper-noun correction and the cross-book connections.
Why spoken quotes need correcting, and how
Speech-to-text is good at ordinary English and bad at the things literature is full of: unusual proper nouns, archaic spellings, invented words. A transcript that renders a character's name three different ways isn't a quote you can search.
ReadingRate corrects the transcript against the book itself. If the book's text is available it matches what you said to the actual passage and restores the exact wording and punctuation; otherwise it corrects against the book's known character and place names. You can also speak the page number and who said the line, and both are pulled out of the transcript and stored as fields rather than left inside the quote text.
What makes a saved quote useful later
Storage isn't the point — retrieval is. Every saved quote is automatically tagged with a few themes, so months later you can find the passage about a subject rather than scrolling through everything you ever kept.
Saved passages are also compared against the rest of your library by meaning, so a line from a novel can surface next to something from a poem or a science book when they're circling the same idea. Connections are drawn from across your own saved quotes, including other books you've read.
There's a recall feature too: saved quotes resurface on a spaced-repetition schedule, on the same principle as flashcards, so a passage you kept two years ago comes back before you've entirely lost it.
Honest limits
- The underline-aware photo extraction is currently in the iOS app. On the web, photographing a page transcribes the whole page rather than just what you marked.
- Correcting a spoken quote against the book's exact text requires that text to be available; otherwise correction falls back to proper nouns only.
- Speaking quotes aloud is impractical in a quiet carriage or a shared room.
- Quote connections only work across passages you've actually saved. A library with a handful of quotes has little to connect.
- None of this decides what's worth keeping. That judgement stays yours, and it's the part that matters.
Save a quote in about five seconds
Speak it, or photograph the page. It gets corrected, tagged, and connected to the rest of your reading.
Related questions
- What's the easiest way to save quotes from a physical book?
- Reading the passage aloud to be transcribed, or photographing the page. Both are faster than typing and, unlike underlining, produce something you can search later.
- Is there an app that extracts my underlined passages from a photo?
- Yes. ReadingRate's iOS app reads a photo of a book page and pulls out specifically the underlined or highlighted passages rather than the whole page.
- Why do my highlights become useless after a few months?
- Because a mark on paper records that something mattered without recording what or why. It isn't searchable or sorted, so there's no way back to it except rereading.
- Can an app get proper nouns right when I dictate a quote?
- ReadingRate corrects the transcript against the book — matching against the actual text where available, and against known character and place names otherwise — which is what makes dictated quotes searchable.