Yes, Tre, you made some good points. Some people may be too shy to comment. That’s what the green recommend button is for. What’s the point of a highlight if no one knows who made the highlight without a comment. Click the heart instead of marking up the work.

Yes, highlighting is easy and addictive. Maybe it’s too easy and addictive. People don’t realize what they’re doing to a creative work of fiction or poetry and to the readers who have to wade through other people’s highlights.

Highlighting isn’t bad in and of itself. For non-fiction opinion pieces it is actually a very beneficial feature. But when a reader is reading an artistic work of fiction or poetry then it can be extremely distracting. The intended emphasis and cadence of the story or poem can be thrown completely off by the highlighting. Instead of reading the author’s emphasis and cadence, with highlighting the reader is reading the emphasis and cadence impinged upon the story by a previous reader. Excessive highlighting can utterly ruin a story for the author (this is especially true in regard to poetry). And sadly, this is why highlighting can also be used as a weapon.

So let me be clear that I am not asking for the removal of this option but rather for there to be an option available to the author whether to allow it or not. Highlighting can be great in some instances and absolutely horrible in others. As authors, we should have a choice. Not only would this protect us from highlighting attacks but it gives us a way to protect the intended integrity of our work.

If I had the choice I would include the option to highlight on any of my non-fiction essays but I would most emphatically turn it off for any short fiction or poetry. I want that choice for my protection. Can the Medium tech wizards figure out how to give us that choice?