Home · Listening and footnotes

# Voice-first or text-first studying

Neither mode wins every time. Voice saves eyes and carries you through long chapters. Text makes skimming, copying quotes, and scanning diagrams faster. Trellis lets you switch without changing apps.

## Pick voice when

- You already read the figures and you need to rehearse prose.
- You are commuting or walking and still want progress on the same file.
- Your eyes are tired but you can follow audio at 0.9x to keep nuance.

## Pick text when

- The chapter has tables, equations, or charts you must inspect.
- You are writing a paper and need precise copy-paste quotes.
- You want to highlight every technical term in a dense page.

## Mix both

Listen for flow, then pause and ask Celeste a targeted question on the paragraph you did not catch, following reading PDFs with Celeste. If audio skipped a note you need, switch to the footnote-friendly workflow in audiobook-style study and finish in visual mode.

## Time blocks that fit real life

Match mode to the slot you have. A twenty-minute walk might cover one clean audio chapter if you already skimmed figures at your desk. A late-night session with heavy notation belongs on screen even if you prefer voice by day. Write the mode you used in your reading log so weekly reviews show whether audio-only nights left gaps.

## Signals you chose wrong

If you cannot answer basic recall questions after a voice session, rerun key pages visually. If your eyes hurt but you keep rereading the same paragraph silently, try slower audio with Celeste on standby for definitions. For group sync, compare notes using group reading habits so mismatched modes do not derail shared deadlines.