Taking notes

1. Notes are a compressed and accurate record of information.

2. Select only the most important points from the original.

3. Make a clear distinction between central issues and illustrative examples.

4. Do not make a full reproduction of the source materials.

Clarity

5. Listen, read, or watch closely, thinking carefully about the content.

6. Decide which parts will be most useful for your purpose.

7. Convert the original material into your own words.

8. This will strengthen your memory traces at a later date.

Materials

9. Always use loose-leaf A4 size paper.

10. This is the standard for business materials and publications.

11. Your notes should fit easily alongside other materials.

12. Avoid using small reporter's notepads (unless you are on a site visit).

13. Use a new set of pages for each new subject.

Layout

14. Write as clearly as possible, and follow the guidelines for good page layout.

15. Leave spaces between each topic.

16. Use a system of tabulation, with numbered points.

17. This helps to identify and keep one point distinct from another.

18. Don't write continuous prose or string points together.

19. Write on one side of page only.

Brevity

20. You can write in grammatically incomplete sentences.

21. These are notes, not finished prose writing.

22. Miss out any words which are not important.

23. Use abbreviations wherever possible.

24. You can also use mathematical symbols such as

+   =   <   &   >