Tracking spotting vs. period

Mi
Ok, I feel kind of silly given that I have been tracking my periods for two years and ttc for 7 months and I am just NOW questioning how I've been tracking.
I just read in the fertility book I got, that if you don't have red (ie you have brown blood) mark that as spotting?? I always have 1-2 days of spotting before AF which I mark as spotting and then about 6-7 days of "period." But realistically only about 4 days of red flow and then brown. Should I be marking the following brown days as spotting? All this time do I have a 4 day period followed by that many days of spotting? So confused haha