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I have always assumed that highlighting meant ‘colouring in’, although on my copy of the grid I usually draw red lines.

In the preamble to EV1469 the wording is ‘... highlighted by drawing lines through the relevant cells’. This is quite logical - drawing lines does have the effect of highlighting the objects. So I wonder if drawing lines would be an acceptable response to the oft-repeated instruction to highlight things.

Only last week, in Listener 4641, there was a requirement to highlight four objects, two of which shared a couple of cells. Indicating these by lines rather than colouring the whole of the cells gives a much clearer illustration of the objects concerned. I hope this approach would be accepted.

I think that where the requirement is simply to 'highlight' specific items any technique which clearly draws attention to those items and no others will be accepted.

I am not aware of a solution to a puzzle of mine ever being rejected on the basis that an inappropriate method of highlighting has been chosen, and when setting puzzles I do not specify how I expect the highlighting to be achieved. However, using a method similar to that seen in printed solutions for the series in question is the safest choice of all.

In Listener 4641 the filling in (as in using a highlighting marker) was surely problematic as two cells were shared.

I approached it by completing the puzzle in black ink, with the three xxxxxx in blue ink and the xxxxxxxx xxxxx in brown ink as they might be on a map.

In the two shared cells it was easy to enter the relevant letters in both colours of ink.

Whether that is an acceptable approach is for Opsimath to decide!

All Listener submissions are checked by the Statistician; he has held the post since 1985, so I imagine he's seen pretty much every variation possible in the 750,000 or so entries he's looked at during his tenure!