THE OPPOSITE END OF THE SPECTRUM

Is there a hierarchy within the highlighter colours or is this just me?

I'm a big admirer of the yellow highlighter pen, can't get enough of his work - he highlights a passage and I'm reading it, I tell you. I scan the page, see the yellow highlighter's work and I know there's stuff there that's worth knowing. If you got all the knowledge in the world in one big vault, yellow highlighter could cut that down to the important, bite-sized chunks in less than a minute.

"Einstein's work? Sure, I can give you the relative information on that."

"Opera, yeah, fat chicks singing - got it?"

With yellow highlighter, you can know enough about every subject to hold your own in any conversation.

By contrast, what is the blue highlighter supposed to be? He marks up a page, it's gloomy. It's like reading crib notes in the cellar with this guy. Why is he even a highlighter? Sometimes, that blue ink is so dark you have to hold the page under a spotlight just to make out the point he's trying to draw your attention to. He's like an anti-highlighter. If I never want to read a passage again, I'm using blue all over it. It's like getting the most important information you'll ever need but being told it with a thick foreign accent. You're trying to deliver a baby in the cockpit while the plane's heading over the Amazon on its one remaining jet and blue highlighter's there going "Virst yuh needa boilen water." You're, like, "What? What is he saying? I can’t make him out. Pleeeeeease help!"

The pink, the orange - they're much of a muchness. They don't really worry anyone too much. They're not yellow. He's our guy. Yellow can be trusted. But orange will do in a pinch, pink can take the page and make it look attractive. They're substitutes to our guy, the yellow, the captain of the team. If he's on the bench with a tip injury, pink or orange can step in, no big deal.

But blue and yellow - these are the yin and the yang of highlighter pens. The great highlighter war will be fought between these two guys.