How to Take Notes

2. The notes you gather in preparation for writing will normally provide detailed evidence to back up any arguments you wish to make. They might also be used as illustrative material. They might include such things as the quotations and page references you plan to use in an essay. Your ultimate objective in planning will be to produce a one or two page outline of the topics you intend to cover.

3. Be prepared for the fact that you might take many more notes than you will ever use. This is perfectly normal. At the note-taking stage you might not be sure exactly what evidence you will need. In addition, the information-gathering stage should also be one of digesting and refining your ideas.

4. Don't feel disappointed if you only use a quarter or even a tenth of your materials. The proportion you finally use might vary from one subject to another, as well as depending on your own particular writing strategy. Just because some material is not used, don't imagine that your efforts have been wasted.

6. Your objective whilst taking the notes is to distinguish the more important from the less important points being made. Record the main issues, not the details. You might write down a few words of the original if you think they may be used in a quotation. Keep these extracts as short as possible unless you will be discussing a longer passage in some detail.

7. Don't try to write down every word of a lecture - or copy out long extracts from books. One of the important features of note-taking is that you are making a digest of the originals, and translating the information into your own words.

8. Some people take so many notes that they don't know which to use when it's time to do the writing. They feel that they are drowning in a sea of information.

9. This problem is usually caused by two common weaknesses in note-taking technique:

• transcribing too much of the original
• being unselective in the choice of topics

10. There are two possible solution to this problem:

• Select only those few words of the source material which will be of use. Avoid being descriptive. Think more, and write less. Be rigorously selective.
• Keep the project topic or the essay question more clearly in mind. Take notes only on those issues which are directly relevant to the subject in question.

• Before you even start, make a note of your source(s). If this is a book, an article, or a journal, write the following information at the head of your notes: Author, title, publisher, publication date, and edition of book.
• Use loose-leaf A4 paper. This is now the international standard for almost all printed matter. Don't use small notepads. You will find it easier to keep track of your notes if they fit easily alongside your other study materials.
• Write clearly and leave a space between each note. Don't try to cram as much as possible onto one page. Keeping the items separate will make them easier to recall. The act of laying out information in this way will cause you to assess the importance of each detail.
• Use some system of tabulation (as I am doing in these notes). This will help to keep the items separate from each other. Even if the progression of numbers doesn't mean a great deal, it will help you to keep the items distinct.
• Don't attempt to write continuous prose. Notes should be abbreviated and compressed. Full grammatical sentences are not necessary. Use abbreviations, initials, and shortened forms of commonly used terms.
• Don't string the points together continuously, one after the other on the page. You will find it very difficult to untangle these items from each other after some time has passed.
• Devise a logical and a memorable layout. Use lettering, numbering, and indentation for sections and for sub-sections. Use headings and sub-headings. Good layout will help you to absorb and recall information. Some people use coloured inks and highlighters to assist this process of identification.
• Use a new page for each set of notes. This will help you to store and identify them later. Keep topics separate, and have them clearly titled and labelled to facilitate easy recall.
• Write on one side of the page only. Number these pages. Leave the blank sides free for possible future additions, and for any details which may be needed later.

12. What follows is an example of notes taken whilst listening to an Open University radio broadcast - a half hour lecture by the philosopher and cultural historian, Isaiah Berlin. It was entitled 'Tolstoy's Views on Art and Morality', which was part of the third level course in literary studies A 312 - The Nineteenth Century Novel and its Legacy.