Do academics have any standard system for annotating text? I teach secondary history classes. My principal is pushing for all teachers to introduce students to a annotation system which should be the same in all classes.  But the system doesn't seem appropriate for my student's needs, e.g. here are some of the 20+ items:


Underline key words.
Put a question mark next to questions you have.
Put a star next to important items.
Put an exclamation mark next to things you felt were interesting.
Write the infinity symbol next to a "connection" you made.
Etc.


The items don't help students to focus on achieving their goal at hand. The annotations might help students to closely read a text, but don't product meaningful notes that students can refer to for other purposes.

My students need to use annotations in two contexts, which I think also resemble the reason-for-annotating text in college:


To annotate a text, identifying items relevant to a given prompt, in preparation for writing a short essay.
To annotate a text, identifying items relevant to their own thesis statement (or possibly requiring them to reevaluate their thesis statement), for a research project.


I tried arguing for a simpler system that addressed these needs, but my suggestion was dropped, because the principal was using a method from a "credible" source, one downloaded from Pinterest. My principal might be swayed if I presented some "standard" method used in academia (i.e. something with a name).

Just as there is formal "Cornell Notes", which was even created by a Cornell professor, is there a named, standard system for annotating in academia?
It's hard to prove a negative, but my experience is that there is no standard system of annotating text.