taking notes essay

The 13 Most Effective Note-Taking Methods

These are efficient note-taking methods that anyone can pick up and use to take better notes.

• By Sander Tamm
• Mar 19, 2024

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“Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work.” Albert Einstein

When you’re first learning a new concept, you’re taking in further information that has to go through the process of memorization.

The human brain, however, is inefficient at remembering things. 

Within  24 hours  of leaving class, your brain will have forgotten more than half of what it remembered at the end of the class.

This phenomenon is described by the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve , which perfectly illustrates the need for note-taking .

Compare the right-side green line with the left-side red line. 

Someone who takes notes and reviews them three times (green line) remembers nearly everything after a week. On the other hand, a person who doesn’t review their notes at all (red line) forgets everything within a week.

Don’t be the red line – make sure you’re one of the green lines instead! To do so, you’ll need to learn how to take  effective , visually interesting , and/or aesthetical notes .

To help you do so, these are the best note-taking methods:

Best Note-Taking Methods

Outline note-taking method.

Best for:  Most subjects except science classes such as physics or math

Difficulty level:  Medium

The  outline method of note-taking  uses indentation to store information in a clear hierarchy. When applicable, the outline method is one of the most efficient note-taking formats as it creates meticulously well-organized notes. The method can also be used in both  deductive and inductive  order.

Outlined notes are some of the easiest to review, as it’s one of the few systems that allow you to see space relationships between topics. However, the method is not always suitable for taking notes during a live lecture, and outlining requires a clear lesson structure. 

Advantages:

• Space relationships between topics are visible,
• Information is recorded in a logical, hierarchical manner,
• Outlined notes are quick and easy to review pre-exam,
• Special notepaper & preparation not required,
• Research on the outline method  has been positive,
• Usable during class (slow to medium-paced lectures).

Disadvantages:

• Unsuitable for some STEM subjects,
• Learning materials/lectures require a clear structure,
• Outlining notes requires intense concentration and thought.

Cornell Note-Taking Method

Best for:  Recording main concepts & forming study questions

Difficulty level:  Easy

The  Cornell note-taking method , developed over half a century ago, is a tried-and-true strategy for taking effective notes. It uses two top columns (the “cue” and “note” columns), together with a single bottom row (the summary section), to record notes. 

The method is versatile, usable for most subjects, and one of the simplest yet most effective note-taking methods. By mastering the Cornell system, you’ll always have at least one solid note-taking skill under your belt. The Cornell system is one of the most popular note-taking strategies in the world for a good reason.

• Organized and systematic for both recording and reviewing notes
• Time-efficient and requires little effort,
• Taking Cornell notes is very easy to learn,
• Suitable for most subjects (except equation-based subjects),
• Fulfills a  natural learning cycle  within one single page,
• Ideal for extracting major concepts and ideas.
• Requires creating or purchasing Cornell-style pages,
• Large quantities of Cornell notes can be challenging to organize,
• Not great at reducing the size of notes,
• Research on the Cornell method  is mixed.

The Cornell method is a variant of the split-page note-taking method  (also known as the two-column method). Try the split-page method if you are finding the Cornell method a bit too restrictive but you like the basic approach of cues or keywords combined with more detailed notes.

Boxing Note-Taking Method

Best for:  Digital note-taking with a stylus pen

The  boxing method of note-taking uses boxes to visually separate topics within a page. While the boxing method was designed for digital devices, it’s a technique that can be easily adapted to handwritten notes. 

Using the boxing strategy results in notes that are visually pleasing and easy to review. The method also takes full advantage of digital-only features such as lassoing, resizing, and moving notes after writing. Together with mind mapping, it’s one of the most effective note-taking strategies for visual learners.

• Takes advantage of digital note-taking tools,
• Great for learners with a visual learning style,
• Aesthetically pleasing notes,
• Notes reduce well.
• Slightly time-intensive,
• Not always practical for note-taking during lectures.

Charting Note-Taking Method

Best for:  Recording facts and statistics

Difficulty level:  Hard

The  charting method of note-taking , also known as “matrix note-taking,” uses charts to classify information within rows and columns. While the method is not usable for many subjects, it is a remarkable tool under the right circumstances. This method is best used with subjects with factual or statistical information that can be categorized into tables.

On the other hand, it’s not suitable for note-taking during live lectures, very detailed topics, and subjects where the space relationships between content are essential. It’s also not well-suited for subjects that have many equation-based problems.

• A compelling method for subjects with lots of facts and statistics,
• Easy comparisons between different topics,
• Reduces note sizes better than any other method,
• Charted notes are straightforward and efficient to review,
• Very efficient for studying comparisons.
• Unsuitable for most subjects,
• Requires a basic understanding of the topic,
• Very time-intensive.

Mapping Note-Taking Method

Best for:  Analyzing visual connections between key ideas and concepts

The mapping method of note-taking , also known as “concept mapping,” connects different thoughts, ideas, concepts, and facts through visualization. Both Leonardo Da Vinci’s and Albert Einstein’s notebooks reportedly contained mapping-style notes that connected drawings to words and notes.

The mapping method starts with a central topic in the middle of the page before branching into smaller subtopics, supporting topics, and more minor details. The method provides a one-of-a-kind graphical overview of lecture content that is irreplaceable for visual learners. 

Mapping is best used in content-rich college classes where the information is structured. However, taking notes in a live class with this method is very rarely possible due to its time-consuming nature.

 Advantages:

• An excellent method for visual learning styles,
• It gives a comprehensive overview of a large subject,
• It helps you understand the connections between small elements within a major topic,
• Maximizes active participation,
• Reviewing mapped notes is very efficient.

 Disadvantages:

• Requires a good understanding of the topic,
• Requires strong concentration,
• It cannot be used effectively during class,
• It can be difficult to correctly include all relationships ,
• Mapping is very time-consuming.

Sentence Note-Taking Method

Best for:  Quick, unstructured note-taking

Difficulty level:  Very easy

The  sentence method of note-taking uses sentences separated by lines to quickly transcribe as much information as possible from the information source. It requires quick handwriting or typing skills to be used effectively, and it’s likely the most commonly used note-taking method due to its simplicity. 

Using the sentence method results in oversized notes that are notoriously difficult to review afterward. However, the sentence method can sometimes be the only viable choice for fast-paced, unstructured lessons you’re unprepared for. It’s often a good idea to rewrite notes taken with the sentence method after class.

Try not to rely on this method when you have a choice, but keep it as a backup plan when you can’t use an alternative note-taking strategy.

• It can be used for any subject and type of class,
• Very easy to implement,
• Suitable for quick note-taking during class.
• Reviewing sentence method notes after class is difficult and time-consuming,
• No inter- and intra- relationships between notes are visible,
• The main points are indistinguishable from more minor details,
• Quick handwriting or typing speed required,
• No element of metacognitive note analysis during note-taking.

Blurting Note-Taking Method

Best for:  Studying and memorizing complex topics

Difficulty level: Medium

Unlike passively highlighting text or rereading notes, the Blurting Method is truly one of the most efficient ways to understand where you are at in your knowledge and do something about it at the same time.

The blurting method of note-taking is an  active recall  technique that can be used to help you learn and remember information. Active recall is basically a learning technique that involves testing yourself on the material that you’re trying to learn and has been shown to be a very effective way to make.

The blurting method, at its simplest, is reading a section of text or notes, then closing them and writing down as much of the information as you can remember. This makes your brain work harder to retain the information, making it really hammer the info down into your long-term memory.

• It can help you identify the areas where you need to focus in your study time, thus making sure that the gaps in your knowledge are covered.
• It gives you a better understanding of the material, as you are forced to put the information into your own words.
• Recall ensures information is retained longer.
• It’s a flexible method that can be modified to suit your needs.
• The method can be used on any type of written learning material – but also after listening to lectures and online course videos.
• This method is time-consuming, and some might find it tedious.
• It does not replace note-taking during on-going lectures.
• It is mentally taxing.
• It is not the most efficient method for memorizing a lot of facts – use flashcards or a similar method in this case

Q/E/C Note-Taking Method

Best for: Argumentative subjects (such as history, philosophy, and literature)

The Question/Evidence/Conclusion (Q/E/C) method of note-taking is a simple but powerful method for organizing and recording information from lectures. Focused on capturing the big ideas and how they relate to each other, the method is structured around concepts that require arguing and evidence to create a clear and concise summary. Each concept is divided up into three parts: question, evidence, and conclusion.

The Q/E/C is ideally suited for most subjects in the humanities, especially ones that tend to present in an argumentative form, such as history, philosophy, and literature. It is also a very useful method to include in your toolbox for other subjects, including technical ones, where it can be suited for certain classes.

The method is also an excellent way to outline or plan for your essays, as it helps you develop a clear structure and will likely help you identify additional questions and counterarguments along the way that you may need to consider.

• Helps you focus on the bigger picture
• Helps you keep track of the relationship between the overall topic and the arguments/evidence
• An excellent way to clearly record more argumentative presentations
• Clear way of presenting arguments and counterarguments
• Forces you to synthesize arguments and write a conclusion
• A good fit for the humanities and non-technical subjects
• Matches the way many lecturers present (and view the world)
• Useful method for outlining argumentative essays
• Less suitable for technical subjects or for concepts with more complex relationships
• Challenging to use during fast-paced or poorly structured lectures
• Requires concentration and reflection
• Can be difficult to use if you don’t yet have an overall grasp of a new subject

Morse Code Note-Taking Method

Best for: Quickly absorb large volumes of course material in argumentative subjects.

Difficulty level: Hard

A fairly recent addition to the realm of note-taking methods – but one that many academics swear by – is the Morse Code note-taking method , a variant of the Q/E/C method . Not to be confused with Morse Code itself, this note-taking method uses dots and dashes to mark up course literature while you are reading it . Importantly, it enables you to keep reading while taking notes rather than pausing to jot down your notes.

Dots are used to denote the main ideas, and dashes for supporting facts, arguments, and examples. After you have finished reading the entire text, you use your notes in the margin to type up notes and then condense them into a format that is useful for further review.

• As you do not stop reading, it is among the most efficient methods for covering larger quantities of text.
• It helps extract the main and supporting points from a text.
• It promotes active reading through the note-taking
• It facilitates reading comprehension and critical thinking through the decoding and condensing stages.
• It is not applicable to all types of reading material (in particular, material that is not structured in an argumentative academic style).
• Very little information is captured in your notes – if you wait too long to decode your notes, you may have forgotten the context.
• Less suitable for readers who tend to lose their focus when engaging in continuous reading (who may benefit from pausing and processing their notes paragraph by paragraph or page by page.

Flow Note-Taking Method

Best for: Understanding interrelationships between concepts at a higher level

While linear note-taking methods (such as the sentence and outline methods) have their place in your toolkit, you will want to complement these with non-linear methods that force you to actively engage with the topic at hand as a whole. Using such methods translate into a better understanding of an area and how its different component parts relate to each other. One of the main non-linear approaches that you should become familiar with is the flow method of note-taking .

It can look similar to the mapping method, but the focus of this method is on the higher-level concepts and ideas and how they relate to each other. Detailed descriptions and paraphernalia have to take a step back. The relationships are indicated using arrows and lines, in whichever way you find useful.

• The flow method aims to have you learn during class by having you engage actively with the content.
• Even though you are actively learning during class, you also get useful notes for revision – while the notes are not in the most useful format for revision, they tend not to be terrible
• It’s a flexible method that suits most subjects.
• It is a good choice for note-taking after having followed a class or after having read all material to solidify your understanding.
• The method can be personalized to suit individuals’ needs and preferences.
• The flow method is not well suited for topics of which you have no prior understanding, as it can be difficult to pick out what is more or less important and figure out how they relate to each other during the class.
• While engaging mainly with the bigger picture, you risk missing important details during lectures.
• Flow notes can easily turn out quite messy and are not ideal for revision (you can try to mitigate this by adding cue words to your notes to prompt you to describe relationships during revisions).
• It can be difficult to find the time to actively engage with a topic during fast-paced lectures, forcing you to take detailed notes and apply the flow method after class instead.
• Practice with the method is needed as you need to figure out how to best use it to suit your learning style.

REAP Method

Best for: Active reading to build deeper understanding of texts

The REAP method (Read, Encode, Annotate, Ponder) was developed by Marilyn Eanet and Anthony Manzo at the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 1976 as a response to what they saw as inadequate teaching methods for developing active reading. The method is designed to help students be able to understand the meaning of texts through reflecting and communicating on their content.

REAP consists of four stages:

• Reading:  Reading the text provided to identify the ideas expressed by the author.
• Encoding:  “Encoding” the main ideas identified in the text in your own words.
• Annotating:  Writing “annotations” of the ideas, quotes, etc., in the text.
• Pondering:  Reflecting on the content and writing comments or criticisms of the text, and discussing with others.

This will make you return to a text multiple times, each time from a different vantage point, and let you gradually analyze the text at a higher and higher level.

• A scientifically proven effective method for improving reading comprehension and recall
• Helps build capacity to engage critically with texts
• Provides a framework for re-engaging with a text from multiple vantage points
• Method that takes a lot of time, focus, and mental energy
• Not suitable for note-taking during lectures
• Less suitable for all texts (such as some college textbooks) or learning purposes (such as more detailed memorization)

Focused Question Clusters Method

Best for: Preparing for multiple-choice or other fact-based tests

Focused Question Clusters is a method, proposed by Cal Newport, to help students use their textbooks and existing lecture notes to prepare for MCQ-style exams by writing questions and then quizzing themselves. 

Focused Question Clusters involve the following main steps:

• Identify your main topic and the relevant subtopics.
• For each subtopic, write a series (or a “cluster”) of questions that relate to it, covering the main points. The questions should be clear and possible to answer with a few words.
• Write a few background topics to the topic as a whole.
• Use these questions to review (you might want to employ one of the relevant study methods for how you quiz yourself, such as active recall )

Although this kind of rapid-fire questions will help most with preparing for multiple-choice style exams, the engagement with the material will also help your brain to make the connections to get a deeper understanding of the topic.

• An effective way to gain and retain knowledge about a topic
• Particularly effective for MCQ-style exams
• A useful tool for studying in groups
• Question drafting can be divided up and the results shared as a resource between students studying together
• Drafting the questions takes a considerable amount of time and effort
• Not the best way to engage with more argumentative topics

Highlighting Method

Best for: Quickly marking up a text that you plan to review later on.

Difficulty level: Easy

Highlighting is a popular study technique that involves marking important passages in a text. The overall idea is to highlight important points in a text – common ones are key numbers, dates, names, and other key points – that can then be easily spotted when reviewing the whole material. In its pure form, it does not involve writing any notes, but in practice, it is often combined with   other note-taking methods .

This a useful method for students, researchers, and anyone else who needs to go through a lot of material as it allows them to quickly find the information they need later on. Note, however, that while this method is very commonly used, it has been the topic of scientific studies that have found it of questionable value for studying.

• Easy to get started with.
• Does not require writing.
• Provides you with a marked-up text that can help you revise more efficiently.
• It’s easy to go on autopilot with the method and become a passive reader rather than actively engaging with the text.
• Studies have found it to be of questionable value.

Sander Tamm

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How to Make Notes and Write

(8 reviews)

Dan Allosso

S.F. Allosso

Copyright Year: 2022

ISBN 13: 9798842209415

Publisher: Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Aaron Lefkovitz, Professor, City Colleges of Chicago on 5/4/22

This writing manual the author wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis is very comprehensive. It reviews multiple aspects of how to get started with writing, such as analyzing texts and taking notes, discovering a topic,... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

This writing manual the author wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis is very comprehensive. It reviews multiple aspects of how to get started with writing, such as analyzing texts and taking notes, discovering a topic, preparing for discussion, creating a thesis, ordering evidence, building an argument, coherent paragraphs, effective sentences, appropriate words, revising, and a revision checklist. Also, it has a valuable appendix and even references to such philosophers as Aristotle, so it is comprehensive in both a practical and theoretical sense.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The content of A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences is accurate, error-free, and unbiased. This can be read in the “Analyzing Texts, Taking Notes” section, where the author begins with unbiased, clear questions, such as “what is a text?” The author then goes on to quote from such sources as author W.H. Auden (1907-1973), English-born poet and man of letters who achieved early fame in the 1930s as a hero of the left during the Great Depression.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences does represent relevance and longevity, in the sense that its chapters can be carried down from one generation to another without much variation, for example read in the “Discovering a Topic, Preparing for Discussion” chapter. Here, the author mentions that texts students work with at the college level of their education are mostly givens, as far as English classics, History primary and secondary sources that are important to understand a particular event and period, as well as the ways texts were chosen out of multiple texts in that they fit together and lead to a particular place.

Clarity rating: 5

There is a great deal of clarity in A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences, as this text makes difficult subjects easier to understand for most students, simplifying such potentially daunting topics as “creating a thesis”. In this chapter, the author asks a variety of questions, including what interpretation is the author trying to persuade the reader is valid, what are the reasons for this interpretation, how is the interpretation different from other interpretations, and what part of the text will be examined and emphasized, as well as what are the author’s assumptions and potential objections. These clear questions provide a sense of clarity for the reader and add to the text’s strengths.

Consistency rating: 5

This text is very consistent. Each chapter starts with an interesting quote that frames the chapter narrative in a compelling way. Then, the chapters start with very first-hand/direct testimony given to readers who can read the paragraphs in a way that is meant to speak to them rather than use jargon and difficult to understand sentences. Chapters follow similar structures in terms of longer paragraphs followed by definitions and clear statements that function to provide additional information with regards to the content and theme of the chapter discussed.

Modularity rating: 5

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences does have easily and readily divisible sections that are useful to the reader in that they break up the narrative and provide all sorts of additional information in an aesthetically pleasing way that can be assigned at different points within the course. There are not enormous blocks of text without subheadings and the text does not seem to be overly self-referential. Instead, there are all sorts of references and data from disparate sources that provide for an interesting and informative read.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

This text is full of effective, concise, and clear sentences, and is organized well in terms of the ways chapters are structured, starting with a quote that has a particular relevance to the chapter theme, including boxed reminders that set themselves apart from the general narrative, and including various bullet points and examples from literature.

Interface rating: 5

Everything that I have read in this textbook signals that it is indeed free of any kind of significant interface issues, including navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Additionally, the text seems to be free of grammatical errors even as it does seem to contain some spacing issues but that could be on my computer only.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

As far as the text’s cultural relevance, it does seem to rely quite heavily on dead White European philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, to add to and accentuate a point, however it is not offensive in the sense that it does not go out of its way to denigrate a particular race, ethnicity, or other cultural background.

This text does a fine job of introducing students to basic essay writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences, its brevity functioning as a strength in that it keeps things fairly simple while adding philosophical and historical contexts to stay academic as well as relevant and consistent.

Reviewed by Megan Anderson, Assistant Professor, Limestone University on 12/7/21

With only 9 chapters, this text does not cover every essay writing skill students need, but it does include focus on the higher order elements of writing. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

With only 9 chapters, this text does not cover every essay writing skill students need, but it does include focus on the higher order elements of writing.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

As the title suggests, the content is sparse, but it appears accurate.

While there are various theories on the teaching of writing in terms of pedagogy, writing skills do not really change in the sense of timeliness. The examples used are relatively common references from history and literature.

Clarity rating: 4

Again the content is minimal, but the material is written in a clear, easy-to-understand manner that would work for even first-year students.

The text is consistent in terms of terminology and framework, and even tone.

Modularity rating: 3

Each chapter is very short so they are easily assignable. And while there are headers, each chapter appears as one long page. Splitting up the content into just a few pages and spacing out the material a little more would be preferential.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 2

While I believe that the text covers many of the essential elements of writing, the chapters appear out of order to me. I would have the chapter on "Effective Sentences" before the one on "Coherent Paragraphs". It is also problematic to me to have a chapter on "Ordering Evidence, Building an Argument" listed before the chapters on basic writing components.

Interface rating: 3

The interface could be easier to navigate. There is no next button to move to easily move from chapter to chapter and to access the nine chapters, you have to click on a plus sign linked to what is called "I. Main Body". It is not very difficult to figure out, but it is just not as thought out as it could be. Like having a Roman Numeral I without a Roman Numeral II is a little odd. It also cannot be saved as a printable PDF.

I do not see any grammatical issues.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

While I do not see any references that are culturally insensitive, there is also no real attempt at diversity or inclusion. Examples are really all from canonical texts, meaning white male authors, like Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Melville.

Reviewed by Anthony Accardi Jr, Adjunct Professor, Middlesex Community College on 5/30/21

In the text "A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences" by Salvatore and Dan Allosso the authors present a simple, easy to follow guide for students to use when organizing, planning, researching, and writing an... read more

In the text "A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences" by Salvatore and Dan Allosso the authors present a simple, easy to follow guide for students to use when organizing, planning, researching, and writing an essay. In addition to essay structure, the authors also provide help with the “basics of effective writing”, including paragraph writing, sentence writing and avoiding common grammatical errors.

The concise format of the text requires that the author’s stay “right on point” which they do effectively and accurately.

By following each step outlined in this text, a student would undoubtedly improve his/her essay writing skills. Each topic the authors address is relevant to the development of a good essay. The strong emphasis put on the steps for writing an essay make this text a guide students will surely refer to again and again throughout their academic careers.

The conversational style used by the authors makes this text easy to read and understand. Most students find writing a nerve-racking ordeal. The authors deal with this by using straightforward language to explain concepts and reinforce the explanations with simple, easy to understand examples.

The authors have designed a textbook consistent from chapter to chapter and "as a whole". In general, each chapter begins with a quote from a famous author about writing, followed by an explanation of the chapter’s topic, followed by a working example. The authors' down to earth writing style is consistent in every chapter of the text.

The short length of the chapters makes them ideal to be read as individual assignments and their compartmentalized structure is suited well for associated writing assignments.

The structure of this text is one of its strongest points. The authors have organized the chapters in a logical order that students should follow when writing an essay.

The text interface is easy to navigate with no issues noticed.

The text is free of grammatical and syntactic errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

The authors have created a text that shows an awareness of the need for cultural sensitivity and is inoffensive and completely class appropriate. . The Chapter titled “Appropriate Words” touches on avoiding the use of “Sexist Language”, which indicates concern for gender respect. Improvement could be made by using a more diverse group of authors for the opening chapter quotes.

I think this text is an excellent source for helping students understand the basic steps needed to write a good essay.

Reviewed by Aerie Bernard, Adjunct Faculty, Humanities, College of DuPage on 4/20/21

This short text provides an approachable primer for novice essayists and reminder of standard practices of academic writing for more experienced writers. Rather than go into great depth, the chapters briefly outline the process of writing academic... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This short text provides an approachable primer for novice essayists and reminder of standard practices of academic writing for more experienced writers. Rather than go into great depth, the chapters briefly outline the process of writing academic essays at the high school or undergraduate level. The text is comprehensive in that it is organized linearly to guide the writer from taking notes and developing a thesis through writing drafts and revisions. There is no index or glossary provided; however, the table of contents and short chapters ensure that the text is easy to navigate.

The content is accurate and error-free. The text is written by educators who attempt to address what they identify as common errors in student writing. As such, the bias present reflects a preference for standard English and traditional structure in academic writing.

Because the text focuses on standard practices in academic writing such as writing strong topic sentences, creating arguable theses, and avoiding passive voice, I doubt the text could become obsolete anytime soon. The text speaks to current trends in academic writing by including tips such as how to use gender neutral language and gears itself towards the high school and undergraduate level by modeling and promoting the use of a conversational tone in academic writing. Short, well-organized, worksheet-like chapters allow plenty of room for one to add to, update, or adapt this text.

The authors advise student essayists to use language and style that illustrates “genuine human conversation.” The text successfully models a balance of accuracy of language with a conversational tone. It is a pleasant read.

The text is consistent in its use of terminology, framework, and voice.

Short chapters with limited scope provide introductions and jumping off points for further discussions and activities related to academic writing in the humanities and social sciences.

The chapters are arranged to illustrate a start to finish approach to writing essays. Each chapter focuses on an element of essay writing. The organization is clear and logical.

Interface rating: 4

I had no difficulty accessing or reading the text online with my laptop and my phone. I was not as successful viewing the EPUB as a download to my phone. The text was too small in Bluefire reader and the app would not allow viewing at a larger font size. I do not know if the limitation was due to the EPUB or the reader app.

I did not notice any grammatical errors.

The text addresses the importance of avoiding problematic language in academic writing in the chapter “Appropriate Words” and cautions that writers avoid repetition and wordiness, cliches, jargon, pop culture references, empty words, words with contested meanings, code words, and overextended/mixed/misapplied metaphors. I notice the absence of resources, strategies, and discussions about words relating to race, ethnicity, background, or identity. Also, examples throughout the text are primarily Western, male, and white. Steps towards inclusiveness are present, such as strategies for gender neutral writing, but there is room for improvement.

Reviewed by Sarah Fischer, Assistant Professor, Marymount University on 2/1/21

The book is *short* and useful. It gives excellent advice for how students can and should select strong evidence, how to write effective openings and closings, and discusses many common grammatical errors. However, the book does not spend enough... read more

The book is *short* and useful. It gives excellent advice for how students can and should select strong evidence, how to write effective openings and closings, and discusses many common grammatical errors. However, the book does not spend enough time on how to organize the body of an essay or how to organize sentences within a paragraph.

This book is well-researched and contains no errors (in terms of subject matter, usage, or grammar).

Very relevant, especially because so many books on writing are long, and the longer they are the less likely students are to read them. This book does very impactful work in a very limited number of pages.

Clarity rating: 3

The book is very clear and accessible for professors and advanced students. Many of the examples from English and History papers utilized in the book would be quite difficult for many first-year students to follow, however.

Formatting is quite consistent; terminology is consistently and appropriately used.

Sections of this book are small, easy to understand, and not overwhelming for any level of student to read.

This book's organization flows in a logical way.

I did not notice any interface issues.

I did not notice any grammatical errors in the text.

The authors took care to be culturally sensitive.

A few short exercises at the end of each section, which instructors could create for their classes, would help students practice the book's lessons as sort of intermediary step between reading about possible pitfalls and working on their own to eliminate issues from their writing.

Reviewed by Deirdre Sullivan, Adjunct Faculty, English Department, Berkshire Community College on 6/27/20

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences by Salvatore Allosso and Dan Allosso is a comprehensive and concise work on how to write good essays on the humanities and the social sciences by clearly defining the... read more

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences by Salvatore Allosso and Dan Allosso is a comprehensive and concise work on how to write good essays on the humanities and the social sciences by clearly defining the definitions of those disciplines. I have not seen many indexes and/or glossaries with these online books, so I don't think it is really necessary for the comprehension of the text.

The content was accurate, without error, and unbiased in its content, syntax, and point of view.

I think the light tone, conversational style, and relevance to all who practice the art of writing is both timely and long-lasting. There is a universal appeal to this approach, and while language is always changing, the rules for written work have more longevity.

The book is written in such a way as to engage even the most reluctant reader into a kind of conspiratorial allegiance on how to approach the art of reading well and writing with lucid accuracy, technical prowess, and enlightened awareness.

The text incorporates terminology into the structure and framework of its chapters with clarity and consistency.

The text is proportionate to reasonable reading and writing assignments. In each chapter, there is a clear way of recognizing and analyzing concepts on writing for use toward student outcomes in a writing course.

This text is logically organized to support and sustain its thesis and the thorough exploration of its guiding elements.

There are no significant interface issues, problems with navigation, or distractions to confuse potential readers.

There are no grammatical errors to my reckoning.

The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. The book embraced multi-culturalism with quotes, questions, and persuasive argument as to how a writer must be objective, open-minded, and thoroughly engaged in standing by their work.

I really loved the conversational style between authors and readers. This father-son duo has clearly taken delight in sharing their love of the world through the art of writing. I really liked the quotes they chose to support their ideas. Perhaps one day, I will use their book in my composition classes. A truly remarkable discovery!

Reviewed by Dayle Turner, Professor, Leeward Community College on 6/27/20

The text covers fairly well the important considerations of writing essays for humanities and social sciences courses. The authors assert their intention of taking students “step-by-step through the process of writing essays for an upper-level... read more

The text covers fairly well the important considerations of writing essays for humanities and social sciences courses. The authors assert their intention of taking students “step-by-step through the process of writing essays for an upper-level high school class or a college course.” The steps of which they speak include analyzing texts, note-taking, formulating essay topics, creating theses, ordering evidence, building arguments, writing coherent paragraphs, composing effective sentences, using appropriate diction, and revising. The text lacks an index and glossary and the inclusion thereof would certainly strengthen the comprehensiveness of the work.

The content of this text is accurate and the steps covered are mostly applicable for first-year college students and high school juniors and seniors.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The content appears up-to-date. Text is devoid of visual imagery, making it potentially less appealing to contemporary/millennial students, but its structure invites relatively easy updating, and all links were accurate.

The text is mostly clear and provides adequate examples to explain the application of material discussed in each chapter.

Consistency rating: 4

The text's consistency would be excellent if an index and glossary were included.

Modularity rating: 4

This text is organized in such a manner that students can be assigned short readings without having to jump hither and yon between chapters or different parts of the book.

There are nine chapters in the text. They are presented in a logical and purposeful order. Critical reading and note-taking comes first while a revision checklist is available at the end. This makes sense as it is important to provide students with suggestions for information-gathering and revision.

The interface is free of any distracting issues. The text is mostly easy to navigate.

I noticed no grammatical errors.

The text successfully represents a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Examples are sensitive and free of stereotypes.

This book would have been beneficial to me as an undergraduate. Most of what it covers are things I had to learn by experience, and the quality of my earliest scholarship would have been much improved with the benefit of these lessons. The text has value as a supplementary or recommended material, particularly for students whose plans include graduate school or writing-intensive professions. Students who are most prepared will get the most out of it, but the text also offers good examples

Reviewed by Matilda (Tillie) Yoder, Librarian, Goshen College on 7/10/19

The scope of this text is very clearly outlined in its title - it aims to guide students through the process of writing essays for humanities and social sciences courses. The Allossos succeed in creating a work that does just that, discussing... read more

The scope of this text is very clearly outlined in its title - it aims to guide students through the process of writing essays for humanities and social sciences courses. The Allossos succeed in creating a work that does just that, discussing techniques and strategies for writing well but assuming that readers will have a reasonable familiarity with English grammar. Contents included how to develop ideas, how to formulate effective arguments, how to identify weak points in writing, and how to revise effectively. It is worth noting that the authors are not concerned with formatting, emphasizing the writing process and not the finicky details of citation structure, title page layout, or font size.These issues are easily addressed on a great many websites and reference works; more concerning is that there is no real discussion of plagiarism or how to manage citations and references, which is an important part of any humanities or social sciences essay that requires research and not a single text.

There is no glossary or index for this work, though the table of contents lays out chapter topics very clearly. An index would be quite useful for instructors and students wanting to use the book in its entirety. Similarly, a reference list with links to related works and websites might also be of use for those who would like more in-depth information on particular techniques not elaborated on in this short work.

The content of this guidebook is accurate, although its narrow focus does mean that is not comprehensive (and it does not intend to be). The strategies outlined in it are standard practice and are conveyed succinctly. Quoted authors are all referenced by name but not in any further detail; simple citations for these quotes would model best practices for the students reading the material.

The content of this guidebook is general enough in nature to remain relevant for some time. The examples given throughout the book reference works of classic Western literature or established understandings of history that American schools are likely to continue to teach - Shakespeare’s plays, the history of slave uprisings in the Americas, the Civil War, and Hemingway all feature. Notably, references are only discussed in the context of example passages, and so no knowledge of the events or plots is necessary to understand what the authors are saying.

The Alessos practice what they preach in this instance, writing directly and clearly. Jargon is almost non-existent, and where it does exist it is always defined and explained. Concepts are clearly illustrated with multiple examples and outlined step by step. The overall vocabulary and level of writing is appropriate for students in grade 11 or above.

Key terms are used continually throughout this work; in particular, the authors emphasize the importance of unity, coherence, and emphasis in effective writing. Vocabulary terms are introduced and used consistently, although alternative terms are listed to ensure understanding.

This guide could be easily divided into distinct sections useful for a wide variety of classes throughout the humanities and social sciences. History and English classes would find it particularly relevant, but introductory writing teachers, writing tutors, and academic support offices would also find much that is useful here. The sections on how to construct a thesis and the revision checklist are particularly applicable to me in my work as a writing tutor. I can see myself having students read specific sections of this book depending on what their particular roadblocks to writing are.

The organization of this text is logical, beginning with the process of note-taking and brainstorming, and moving on to persuasive argument building, thesis construction, essay structure, writing, and revision. The revision checklist at the end of the textbook is also organized in such a way that it leads students to look for major issues in their writing before the minor ones.

Overall, the guidebook displayed well and is easy to navigate. There are no images included, and although images are not strictly necessary for this sort of topic, I believe that the text would benefit from some formatting changes. Some of the lists could use better visual clues in their subdivision, and example paragraphs would benefit from being presented in a diagram format where specific portions could be highlighted and remarked on more directly. Unfortunately, this title is not available in PDF format, which would be useful for anyone wanting access to the book without an internet connection. Epub format would be useful as well.

I noticed no grammatical errors or typos in this text.

All references to culture in this text appear in example writing passages. Because of this, no deep understanding of the referenced work or work is needed, because it is the writing and not the content of the passage that is the focus. However, almost all of the references included are focused on classic works concerning Western literature and history (Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Beowulf, etc.). A broadening of examples would be welcome, but as it stands the text is inoffensive and reflects what is taught in many English classes in American schools.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Inspiration, Interest, Anxiety
• 2. Writing is Thinking
• 3. Working with Ideas
• 4. Highlighting and Taking Notes
• 5. Making Source Notes
• 6. Discovering Topics and Connections
• 7. Organizing Output
• 8. Coherent Paragraphs
• 9. Effective Sentences
• 10. Appropriate Words
• 11. Revising
• Revision Checklist

Ancillary Material

About the book.

There are plenty of personal knowledge management systems out there, promising to help you take smart notes or link your thinking or build a second brain. And there are plenty of writing guides out there promising to teach you the elements of style. This book offers a simple and effective way to make effective notes on sources and your interpretations of them, then turn those thoughts into clear and compelling output.

About the Contributors

Contribute to this page.

• Utility Menu

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• Note-taking

Think about how you take notes during class. Do you use a specific system? Do you feel that system is working for you? What could be improved? How might taking notes during a lecture, section, or seminar be different online versus in the classroom? 

Adjust how you take notes during synchronous vs. asynchronous learning (slightly) . 

First, let’s distinguish between  synchronous  and  asynchronous  instruction. Synchronous classes are live with the instructor and students together, and asynchronous instruction is material recorded by the professor for viewing by students at another time. Sometimes asynchronous instruction may include a recording of a live Zoom session with the instructor and students. 

With this distinction in mind,  here are some tips on how to take notes during both types of instruction:

Taking notes during live classes (synchronous instruction).

Taking notes when watching recorded classes (asynchronous instruction)., check in with yourself., if available, annotate lecture slides during lecture., consider writing notes by hand., review your notes., write down questions..

Below are some common and effective note-taking techniques: 

Cornell Notes

If you are looking for help with using some of the tips and techniques described above, come to the ARC’s note-taking workshop, offered several times every semester.

Register for ARC Workshops

Accordion style.

• Assessing Your Understanding
• Building Your Academic Support System
• Common Class Norms
• Effective Learning Practices
• First-Year Students
• How to Prepare for Class
• Interacting with Instructors
• Know and Honor Your Priorities
• Memory and Attention
• Minimizing Zoom Fatigue
• Office Hours
• Perfectionism
• Scheduling Time
• Senior Theses
• Study Groups
• Tackling STEM Courses
• Test Anxiety

Effective Note-Taking in Class

Do you sometimes struggle to determine what to write down during lectures? Have you ever found yourself wishing you could take better or more effective notes? Whether you are sitting in a lecture hall or watching a lecture online, note-taking in class can be intimidating, but with a few strategic practices, anyone can take clear, effective notes. This handout will discuss the importance of note-taking, qualities of good notes, and tips for becoming a better note-taker.

Why good notes matter

In-class benefits.

Taking good notes in class is an important part of academic success in college. Actively taking notes during class can help you focus and better understand main concepts. In many classes, you may be asked to watch an instructional video before a class discussion. Good note-taking will improve your active listening, comprehension of material, and retention. Taking notes on both synchronous and asynchronous material will help you better remember what you hear and see.

Post-class benefits

After class, good notes are crucial for reviewing and studying class material so that you better understand it and can prepare appropriately for exams. Efficient and concise notes can save you time, energy, and confusion that often results from trying to make sense of disorganized, overwhelming, insufficient, or wordy notes. When watching a video, taking good notes can save you from the hassle of pausing, rewinding, and rewatching large chunks of a lecture. Good notes can provide a great resource for creating outlines and studying.

How to take good notes in class

There’s a lot going on during class, so you may not be able to capture every main concept perfectly, and that’s okay. Part of good note-taking may include going back to your notes after class (ideally within a day or two) to check for clarity and fill in any missing pieces. In fact, doing so can help you better organize your thoughts and to determine what’s most important. With that in mind, it’s important to have good source material.

Preparing to take good notes in class

The first step to taking good notes in class is to come to class prepared. Here are some steps you can take to improve your note-taking before class even begins:

• Preview your text or reading assignments prior to lecture. Previewing allows you to identify main ideas and concepts that will most likely be discussed during the lecture.
• Look at your course syllabus so that you know the topic/focus of the class and what’s going to be important to focus on.
• Briefly review notes from previous class sessions to help you situate the new ideas you’ll learn in this class.
• Keep organized to help you find information more easily later. Title your page with the class name and date. Keep separate notebook sections or notebooks for each class and keep all notes for each class together in one space, in chronological order.

Note-taking during class

Now that you are prepared and organized, what can you do to take good notes while listening to a lecture in class? Here are some practical steps you can try to improve your in-class note-taking:

• If you are seeking conceptual information, focus on the main points the professor makes, rather than copying down the entire presentation or every word the professor says. Remember, if you review your notes after class, you can always fill in any gaps or define words or concepts you didn’t catch in class.
• If you are learning factual information, transcribing most of the lecture verbatim can help with recall for short-answer test questions, but only if you study these notes within 24 hours.
• Record questions and thoughts you have or content that is confusing to you that you want to follow-up on later or ask your professor about.
• Jot down keywords, dates, names, etc. that you can then go back and define or explain later.
• Take visually clear, concise, organized, and structured notes so that they are easy to read and make sense to you later. See different formats of notes below for ideas.
• If you want your notes to be concise and brief, use abbreviations and symbols. Write in bullets and phrases instead of complete sentences. This will help your mind and hand to stay fresh during class and will help you access things easier and quicker after class. It will also help you focus on the main concepts.
• Be consistent with your structure. Pick a format that works for you and stick with it so that your notes are structured the same way each day.
• For online lectures, follow the above steps to help you effectively manage your study time. Once you’ve watched the lecture in its entirety, use the rewind feature to plug in any major gaps in your notes. Take notes of the timestamps of any parts of the lecture you want to revisit later.

Determining what’s important enough to write down

You may be asking yourself how you can identify the main points of a lecture. Here are some tips for recognizing the most important points in a lecture:

• Introductory remarks often include summaries of overviews of main points.
• Listen for signal words/phrases like, “There are four main…” or “To sum up…” or “A major reason why…”
• Repeated words or concepts are often important.
• Non-verbal cues like pointing, gestures, or a vocal emphasis on certain words, etc. can indicate important points.
• Final remarks often provide a summary of the important points of the lecture.
• Consider watching online lectures in real time. Watching the lecture for the first time without pausing or rewinding can help force you to focus on what’s important enough to write down.

Different formats for notes

There is no right format to use when taking notes. Rather, there are many different structures and styles that can be used. What’s important is that you find a method that works for you and encourages the use of good note-taking qualities and stick with it. Here are a few types of formats that you may want to experiment with:

1. Cornell Notes: This style includes sections for the date, essential question, topic, notes, questions, and a summary. Check out this link  for more explanation.

2. Outline: An outline organizes the lecture by main points, allowing room for examples and details.

3. Flowchart/concept map: A visual representation of notes is good for content that has an order or steps involved. See more about concept mapping here .

4. Charting Method : A way to organize notes from lectures with a substantial amount of facts through dividing key topics into columns and recording facts underneath.

5. Sentence Method : One of the simplest forms of note taking, helpful for disseminating which information from a lecture is important by quickly covering details and information.

Consider…what’s the best strategy for you: handwritten, digital, or both?

Taking notes in a way to fully understand all information presented conceptually and factually may differ between students. For instance, working memory, or the ability to process and manipulate information in-the-moment, is often involved in transcribing lecture notes, which is best done digitally; but there are individual differences in working memory processes that may affect which method works best for you. Research suggests that handwriting notes can help us learn and remember conceptual items better than digital notes. However, there are some pros to typing notes on a computer as well, including speed and storage. Consider these differences before deciding what is best for you.

Follow up after class

Part of good note-taking includes revisiting your notes a day or so after class. During this time, check for clarity, fill in definitions of key terms, organize, and figure out any concepts you may have missed or not fully understood in class. Figure out what may be missing and what you may need to add or even ask about. If your lecture is recorded, you may be able to take advantage of the captions to review.

Many times, even after taking good notes, you will need to utilize other resources in order to review, solidify, question, and follow-up with the class. Don’t forget to use the resources available to you, which can only enhance your note-taking. These resources include:

• Office Hours : Make an appointment with your professor or TA to ask questions about concepts in class that confused you.
• Academic Coaching : Make an appointment with an Academic Coach at the Learning Center to discuss your note-taking one-on-one, brainstorm other strategies, and discuss how to use your notes to study better.
• Learning Center resources : The Learning Center has many other handouts about related topics, like studying and making the most of lectures. Check out some of these handouts and videos to get ideas to improve other areas of your academics.
• Reviewing your notes : Write a summary of your notes in your own words, write questions about your notes, fill in areas, or chunk them into categories or sections.
• Self-testing : Use your notes to make a study guide and self-test to prepare for exams.

Works consulted

“The Pen is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking.” Mueller, P., and Oppenheimer, D. Psychological Science 25(6), April 2014.

“Note-taking With Computers: Exploring Alternative Strategies for Improved Recall.” Bui, D.C., Myerson, J., and Hale, S. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(299-309), 2013.

“How To Take Study Notes: 5 Effective Note Taking Methods.” Oxford Learning. Retrieved from https://www.oxfordlearning.com/5-effective-note-taking-methods/

“Preparing for Taking Notes.” The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved from http://tutorials.istudy.psu.edu/notetaking/notetaking2.html

“Listening Note Taking Strategies.” UNSW Sydney. Retrieved from https://student.unsw.edu.au/note-taking-skills

“Note Taking and In-Class Skills.” Virginia Tech University. Retrieved from https://www.ucc.vt.edu/academic_support/study_skills_information/note_taking_and_in-class_skills.html

“Lecture Note Taking.” College of Saint Benedict, Saint John’s University. Retrieved from https://www.csbsju.edu/academic-advising/study-skills-guide/lecture-note-taking

“Note Taking 101.” Oregon State University. Retrieved from http://success.oregonstate.edu/learning/note-taking-tips

“Note Taking. Why Should I Take Notes in Class?” Willamette University. Retrieved from http://willamette.edu/offices/lcenter/resources/study_strategies/notes.html

If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

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Student Note-Taking: Level Up Your Essay Writing

Follow this real life example of how students can write their essays much easier and faster with Scrintal, a free tool used by top students and visual thinkers.

Become a Visual Thinker

Introduction | A Student’s Perspective

As an undergraduate student with a minor in the social sciences, I’ve written my fair share of essays. I see the value in outlining, but the way I’ve learned to do it in school forces me to compartmentalize my thoughts into strict categories, and it’s harder to make connections between points without filling up the margins with messy written notes or adding asterisks and typing footnotes. Without these visual reminders, my head is swimming with ideas and it’s difficult to focus on the topic at hand.  

Even in cases where I’m writing an essay about which I’m not bursting with ideas, sitting in front of a blank document with nowhere to start is a daunting feeling that doesn’t inspire creativity or ideation. I’ve often been known to fill up a flashcard full of keywords and phrases that relate to my essay topic and can be referred to while I write.

But there’s a better solution now.

Planning | How To Plan Essay Writing With Scrintal

Before Scrintal, my essay-writing process depended on the length and topic of the paper. I would start with reading the source material, usually consisting of one or many philosophy papers that varied in complexity from op-eds to intricate and meandering textbook chapters. 

Hume and Marx were always easy reads if you could pay attention, and to write a thousand-word paper on them would be a breeze. I would start with a cheeky first sentence and from there I could write in an ordered fashion and edit along the way. A final read-through before submitting and I was done; these essays received good marks, because they started with a single source, relied on a single thesis statement, and referenced materials that were concise, well-organized, and simple to understand. 

Kierkegaard and Heidegger, on the other hand, were more complex. After a lot of Googling questions, skimming Wikipedia, and taking breaks from reading to lean back in my chair and ponder the last sentence, I could grasp the basic concept of a difficult paper. But explaining it in full, much less writing an original paper, was a whole different story. I struggled through these and made it out the other side, but it was inefficient and sometimes uninspired; I would feel like all the ideas I came up with while reading had been lost along the way in my quest to understand the next sentence, and the one after that, and the one after that. 

Scrintal changed that: I’ve written two essays using Scrintal, one being a relatively short paper that required comparing two sources and another ten-pager for which I referenced three lengthy academic articles and one 400-page book.

For the comparison paper, I wrote notes on Scrintal as I read and highlighted in OneNote, creating connecting cards about similar ideas between the two papers as well as counterarguments. I only had to read each paper one time to articulate my ideas, and I didn’t have to write in the OneNote margins to explain my highlights; I only highlighted so I could remember which sentences to quote. This significantly cut down my ideation time and ensured I didn’t have to reread material, the latter of which always used to make me feel too entrenched in the source to be able to step back and write about it in my own words.

For the second ten-page essay, I read through sources and added cards to denote different ideas, easily connecting them to one other by linking cards. I added quotes directly from sources into my cards and each card represented a different argument in support of my thesis. Because the paper was longer and more complex, I did return to my sources to verify that the points I made were correctly described; but rather than verifying my entire paper sentence by sentence, I was able to parse through cards and make connections as they appeared, ensuring that my spontaneous ideas were not lost along the way. 

Since the writing of these essays, a new Scrintal update also allows the user to link to an online PDF file in their card and open the document in a new window alongside their card, which makes the process of writing while reading even easier. You can also do this with YouTube videos to listen and type at the same time. A great feature to add would be the ability to upload PDFs and other documents as well as videos (like downloadable lecture videos from online classes) with the same results rather than having to link PDFs available from online sources.

You can also now tag cards or change their color, which I would have used to differentiate cards based on whether they represent ideas, arguments, or entire reference summaries. These tools will definitely come into play in my future uses.

Based on my experience, my favorite Scrintal planning features are as follows:

Flexibility of creating and marking notecards for different essay components

Ability to easily connect ideas between cards in order to remember where they are relevant

Search function, which allows me to clear my desk of cards that are not immediately needed and bring them back as required

Ability to open documents and videos in a separate window within the Scrintal ecosystem to avoid switching between different tabs

Folding and expanding cards to see the big picture of a paper and ensure everything I need to address is included in my ideas

Ideation in essay writing is the most difficult part for me. Once I know what I need to write about, the writing itself is easy; and the flow of writing is much smoother when it’s not interrupted by having to think about where to go next. Instead, my thought process and direction are easily laid out in the connected cards.

Writing | How To Write An Essay Using Scrintal

Before Scrintal, writing was either a putting-to-paper of my stream of consciousness or a laborious and frustrating ordeal, again depending on the length and topic of the essay. But the main function of Scrintal for essays is the planning, and once this is done, writing is as simple as adding more detail and transforming ideas into coherent, meaningful sentences. Even if I don’t know exactly the order in which I want to write a paper when I begin, I can collapse my notes all at once to see all the components of my thesis and decide which naturally comes after the one before. I was even able to copy and paste phrases directly from Scrintal into my essay with few changes; because these ideas were written while I was in the throes of reading, they were my first and best attempts at synthesizing what I had read in my own words and could function as efficient explanatory or introductory phrases in the paper itself. I would not have been able to do this if my ideas were written down after I had finished reading the whole source material, but since I wrote while I read, the ideas were fresh in my mind and well-articulated in my notecard.

Conclusion | The Future of Essay Writing

My experience with the early rendition of Scrintal improved my ideation, efficiency, and attitude when it came to writing essays. Having seen the new improvements in available tools and user experience, I see this continuing to be the case. Any concerns I had while completing these two essays have since been mostly resolved: namely, I no longer have to switch between tabs to write notes while reading or listening if the PDF or video is available online, nor is it necessary to have all cards in the same color or always view all cards and their content rather than the card titles alone. 

Scrintal could not have come at a better time, because I am currently in the process of writing my undergraduate thesis, an extensive term-long assignment that is largely self-directed and requires diligent documentation of ideas. While my high school education prepared me to write essays with surprise prompts under time constraints, Scrintal allows me to formulate well-researched and thoughtfully planned papers with ease. I can choose when to focus on an idea and when to step back and see the progress of my research. I can decide when to clear my desk and when to bring everything back into the picture. I can easily explore a new idea and the substance behind it, even deleting it or moving the information to an existing card if needed. The team behind this tool values user feedback and has implemented it faster than any other company I have seen; so I have no doubt that any potential improvements will make it to my desk and further enhance my experience. 

The future of my writing is Scrintal, and I’m not going back.

Isha Trivedi

5.3 Taking Notes

Questions to Consider:

• How can you prepare to take notes to maximize the effectiveness of the experience?
• What are some specific strategies you can employ for better note-taking?
• Why is annotating your notes after the note-taking session a critical step to follow?

Beyond providing a record of the information you are reading or hearing, notes help you organize the ideas and help you make meaning out of something about which you may not be familiar, so note-taking and reading are two compatible skill sets. Taking notes also helps you stay focused on the question at hand. Nanami often takes notes during presentations or class lectures so she can follow the speaker’s main points and condense the material into a more readily usable format. Strong notes build on your prior knowledge of a subject, help you discuss trends or patterns present in the information, and direct you toward areas needing further research or reading.

It is not a good habit to transcribe every single word a speaker utters—even if you have an amazing ability to do that. Most of us don’t have that court-reporter-esque skill level anyway, and if we try, we would end up missing valuable information. Learn to listen for main ideas and distinguish between these main ideas and details that typically support the ideas. Include examples that explain the main ideas, but do so using understandable abbreviations.

Think of all notes as potential study guides. In fact, if you only take notes without actively working on them after the initial note-taking session, the likelihood of the notes helping you is slim. Research on this topic concludes that without active engagement after taking notes, most students forget 60–75 percent of material over which they took the notes—within two days! That sort of defeats the purpose, don’t you think? This information about memory loss was first brought to light by 19th-century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. Fortunately, you do have the power to thwart what is sometimes called the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve by reinforcing what you learned through review at intervals shortly after you take in the material and frequently thereafter.

If you are a musician, you’ll understand this phenomenon well. When you first attempt a difficult piece of music, you may not remember the chords and notes well at all, but after frequent practice and review, you generate a certain muscle memory and cognitive recall that allows you to play the music more easily.

Note-taking may not be the most glamorous aspect of your higher-education journey, but it is a study practice you will carry throughout college and into your professional life. Setting yourself up for successful note-taking is almost as important as the actual taking of notes, and what you do after your note-taking session is equally significant. Well-written notes help you organize your thoughts, enhance your memory, and participate in class discussion, and they prepare you to respond successfully on exams. With all that riding on your notes, it would behoove you to learn how to take notes properly and continue to improve your note-taking skills.

Analysis Question

Do you currently have a preferred way to take notes? When did you start using it? Has it been effective? What other strategy might work for you?

Preparing to Take Notes

Preparing to take notes means more than just getting out your laptop or making sure you bring pen and paper to class. You’ll do a much better job with your notes if you understand why we take notes, have a strong grasp on your preferred note-taking system, determine your specific priorities depending on your situation, and engage in some version of efficient shorthand.

Like handwriting and fingerprints, we all have unique and fiercely independent note-taking habits. These understandably and reasonably vary from one situation to the next, but you can only improve your skills by learning more about ways to take effective notes and trying different methods to find a good fit.

The very best notes are the ones you take in an organized manner that encourages frequent review and use as you progress through a topic or course of study. For this reason, you need to develop a way to organize all your notes for each class so they remain together and organized. As old-fashioned as it sounds, a clunky three-ring binder is an excellent organizational container for class notes. You can easily add to previous notes, insert handouts you may receive in class, and maintain a running collection of materials for each separate course. If the idea of carrying around a heavy binder has you rolling your eyes, then transfer that same structure into your computer files. If you don’t organize your many documents into some semblance of order on your computer, you will waste significant time searching for improperly named or saved files.

You may be interested in relatively new research on what is the more effective note-taking strategy: handwriting versus typing directly into a computer. While individuals have strong personal opinions on this subject, most researchers agree that the format of student notes is less important than what students do with the notes they take afterwards. Both handwriting notes and using a computer for note-taking have pros and cons.

Managing Note-Taking Systems (Computer, Paper/Pen, Note Cards, Textbook)

Whichever of the many note-taking systems you choose (and new ones seem to come out almost daily), the very best one is the one that you will use consistently. The skill and art of note-taking is not automatic for anyone; it takes a great deal of practice, patience, and continuous attention to detail. Add to that the fact that you may need to master multiple note-taking techniques for different classes, and you have some work to do. Unless you are specifically directed by your instructor, you are free to combine the best parts of different systems if you are most comfortable with that hybrid system.

Just to keep yourself organized, all your notes should start off with an identifier, including at the very least the date, the course name, the topic of the lecture/presentation, and any other information you think will help you when you return to use the notes for further study, test preparation, or assignment completion. Additional, optional information may be the number of note-taking sessions about this topic or reminders to cross-reference class handouts, textbook pages, or other course materials. It’s also always a good idea to leave some blank space in your notes so you can insert additions and questions you may have as you review the material later.

Note-Taking Strategies

You may have a standard way you take all your notes for all your classes. When you were in high school, this one-size-fits-all approach may have worked. Now that you’re in college, reading and studying more advanced topics, your general method may still work some of the time, but you should have some different strategies in place if you find that your method isn’t working as well with college content. You probably will need to adopt different note-taking strategies for different subjects. The strategies in this section represent various ways to take notes in such a way that you are able to study after the initial note-taking session.

Cornell Method

One of the most recognizable note-taking systems is called the Cornell Method , a relatively simple way to take effective notes devised by Cornell University education professor Dr. Walter Pauk in the 1940s. In this system, you take a standard piece of note paper and divide it into three sections by drawing a horizontal line across your paper about one to two inches from the bottom of the page (the summary area) and then drawing a vertical line to separate the rest of the page above this bottom area, making the left side about two inches (the recall column) and leaving the biggest area to the right of your vertical line (the notes column). You may want to make one page and then copy as many pages as you think you’ll need for any particular class, but one advantage of this system is that you can generate the sections quickly. Because you have divided up your page, you may end up using more paper than you would if you were writing on the entire page, but the point is not to keep your notes to as few pages as possible. The Cornell Method provides you with a well-organized set of notes that will help you study and review your notes as you move through the course. If you are taking notes on your computer, you can still use the Cornell Method in Word or Excel on your own or by using a template someone else created.

Now that you have the note-taking format generated, the beauty of the Cornell Method is its organized simplicity. Just write on one side of the page (the right-hand notes column)—this will help later when you are reviewing and revising your notes. During your note-taking session, use the notes column to record information over the main points and concepts of the lecture; try to put the ideas into your own words, which will help you not transcribe the speaker’s words verbatim. Skip lines between each idea in this column. Practice the shortcut abbreviations covered in the next section and avoid writing in complete sentences. Don’t make your notes too cryptic, but you can use bullet points or phrases equally well to convey meaning—we do it all the time in conversation. If you know you will need to expand the notes you are taking in class but don’t have time, you can put reminders directly in the notes by adding and underlining the word expand by the ideas you need to develop more fully.

As soon as possible after your note-taking session, preferably within eight hours but no more than twenty-four hours, read over your notes column and fill in any details you missed in class, including the places where you indicated you wanted to expand your notes. Then in the recall column, write any key ideas from the corresponding notes column—you can’t stuff this smaller recall column as if you’re explaining or defining key ideas. Just add the one- or two-word main ideas; these words in the recall column serve as cues to help you remember the detailed information you recorded in the notes column.

Once you are satisfied with your notes and recall columns, summarize this page of notes in two or three sentences using the summary area at the bottom of the sheet. This is an excellent time to get with another classmate or a group of students who all heard the same lecture to make sure you all understood the key points. Now, before you move onto something else, cover the large notes column, and quiz yourself over the key ideas you recorded in the recall column. Repeat this step often as you go along, not just immediately before an exam, and you will help your memory make the connections between your notes, your textbook reading, your in-class work, and assignments that you need to succeed on any quizzes and exams.

The main advantage of the Cornell Method is that you are setting yourself up to have organized, workable notes. The neat format helps you move into study-mode without needing to re-copy less organized notes or making sense of a large mass of information you aren’t sure how to process because you can’t remember key ideas or what you meant. If you write notes in your classes without any sort of system and later come across something like “Napoleon—short” in the middle of a glob of notes, what can you do at this point? Is that important? Did it connect with something relevant from the lecture? How would you possibly know? You are your best advocate for setting yourself up for success in college.

Other note organizing systems may help you in different disciplines. You can take notes in a formal outline if you prefer, using Roman numerals for each new topic, moving down a line to capital letters indented a few spaces to the right for concepts related to the previous topic, then adding details to support the concepts indented a few more spaces over and denoted by an Arabic numeral. You can continue to add to a formal outline by following these rules.

You don’t absolutely have to use the formal numerals and letter, but you have to then be careful to indent so you can tell when you move from a higher level topic to the related concepts and then to the supporting information. The main benefit of an outline is how organized it is. You have to be on your toes when you are taking notes in class to ensure you keep up the organizational format of the outline, which can be tricky if the lecture or presentation is moving quickly or covering many diverse topics.

The following formal outline example shows the basic pattern:

• Protection (supporting info about the concept)
• Family-friendly (supporting info about the concept)

You would just continue on with this sort of numbering and indenting format to show the connections between main ideas, concepts, and supporting details. Whatever details you do not capture in your note-taking session, you can add after the lecture as you review your outline.

Chart or table

Similar to creating an outline, you can develop a chart to compare and contrast main ideas in a note-taking session. Divide your paper into four or five columns with headings that include either the main topics covered in the lecture or categories such as How?, What?, When used?, Advantages/Pros, Disadvantages/Cons, or other divisions of the information. You write your notes into the appropriate columns as that information comes to light in the presentation.

This format helps you pull out the salient ideas and establishes an organized set of notes to study later. (If you haven’t noticed that this reviewing later idea is a constant across all note-taking systems, you should…take note of that.) Notes by themselves that you never reference again are little more than scribblings. That would be a bit like compiling an extensive grocery list so you stay on budget when you shop, work all week on it, and then just throw it away before you get to the store. You may be able to recall a few items, but likely won’t be as efficient as you could be if you had the notes to reference. Just as you cannot read all the many books, articles, and documents you need to peruse for your college classes, you cannot remember the most important ideas of all the notes you will take as part of your courses, so you must review.

Concept Mapping and Visual Note-Taking

One final note-taking method that appeals to learners who prefer a visual representation of notes is called mapping or sometimes mind mapping or concept mapping, although each of these names can have slightly different uses. Variations of this method abound, so you may want to look for more versions online, but the basic principles are that you are making connections between main ideas through a graphic depiction; some can get rather elaborate with colors and shapes, but a simple version may be more useful at least to begin. Main ideas can be circled or placed in a box with supporting concepts radiating off these ideas shown with a connecting line and possibly details of the support further radiating off the concepts. You can present your main ideas vertically or horizontally, but turning your paper long-ways, or in landscape mode, may prove helpful as you add more main ideas.

You may be interested in trying visual note-taking or adding pictures to your notes for clarity. Sometimes when you can’t come up with the exact wording to explain something or you’re trying to add information for complex ideas in your notes, sketching a rough image of the idea can help you remember. According to educator Sherrill Knezel in an article entitled “The Power of Visual Note-taking,” this strategy is effective because “When students use images and text in note-taking, it gives them two different ways to pull up the information, doubling their chances of recall.” Don’t shy away from this creative approach to note-taking just because you believe you aren’t an artist; the images don’t need to be perfect. You may want to watch Rachel Smith’s TEDx Talk called “Drawing in Class” to learn more about visual note-taking.

You can play with different types of note-taking suggestions and find the method(s) you like best, but once you find what works for you, stick with it. You will become more efficient with the method the more you use it, and your note-taking, review, and test prep will become, if not easier, certainly more organized, which can decrease your anxiety.

Practicing Decipherable Shorthand

Most college students don’t take a class in shorthand, once the domain of secretaries and executive assistants, but maybe they should. That almost-lost art in the age of computers could come in very handy during intense note-taking sessions. Elaborate shorthand systems do exist, but you would be better served in your college note-taking adventures to hone a more familiar, personalized form of shorthand to help you write more in a shorter amount of time. Seemingly insignificant shortcuts can add up to ease the stress note-taking can induce—especially if you ever encounter an “I’m not going to repeat this” kind of presenter! Become familiar with these useful abbreviations:

Do you have any other shortcuts or symbols that you use in your notes? Ask your parents if they remember any that you may be able to learn.

Annotating Notes After Initial Note-Taking Session

Annotating notes after the initial note-taking session may be one of the most valuable study skills you can master. Whether you are highlighting, underlining, or adding additional notes, you are reinforcing the material in your mind and memory.

Admit it—who can resist highlighting markers? Gone are the days when yellow was the star of the show, and you had to be very careful not to press too firmly for fear of obliterating the words you were attempting to emphasize. Students now have a veritable rainbow of highlighting options and can color-code notes and text passages to their hearts’ content. Technological advances may be important, but highlighter color choice is monumental! Maybe.

The only reason to highlight anything is to draw attention to it, so you can easily pick out that ever-so-important information later for further study or reflection. One problem many students have is not knowing when to stop. If what you need to recall from the passage is a particularly apt and succinct definition of the term important to your discipline, highlighting the entire paragraph is less effective than highlighting just the actual term. And if you don’t rein in this tendency to color long passages (possibly in multiple colors) you can end up with a whole page of highlighted text. Ironically, that is no different from a page that is not highlighted at all, so you have wasted your time. Your mantra for highlighting text should be  less is more . Always read your text selection first before you start highlighting anything. You need to know what the overall message is before you start placing emphasis in the text with highlighting.

Another way to annotate notes after initial note-taking is underlying significant words or passages. Albeit not quite as much fun as its colorful cousin highlighting, underlining provides precision to your emphasis.

Some people think of annotations as only using a colored highlighter to mark certain words or phrases for emphasis. Actually, annotations can refer to anything you do with a text to enhance it for your particular use (either a printed text, handwritten notes, or other sort of document you are using to learn concepts). The annotations may include highlighting passages or vocabulary, defining those unfamiliar terms once you look them up, writing questions in the margin of a book, underlining or circling key terms, or otherwise marking a text for future reference. You can also annotate some electronic texts.

Realistically, you may end up doing all of these types of annotations at different times. We know that repetition in studying and reviewing is critical to learning, so you may come back to the same passage and annotate it separately. These various markings can be invaluable to you as a study guide and as a way to see the evolution of your learning about a topic. If you regularly begin a reading session writing down any questions you may have about the topic of that chapter or section and also write out answers to those questions at the end of the reading selection, you will have a good start to what that chapter covered when you eventually need to study for an exam. At that point, you likely will not have time to reread the entire selection especially if it is a long reading selection, but with strong annotations in conjunction with your class notes, you won’t need to do that. With experience in reading discipline-specific texts and writing essays or taking exams in that field, you will know better what sort of questions to ask in your annotations.

What you have to keep in the front of your mind while you are annotating, especially if you are going to conduct multiple annotation sessions, is to not overdo whatever method you use. Be judicious about what you annotate and how you do it on the page, which means you must be neat about it. Otherwise, you end up with a mess of either color or symbols combined with some cryptic notes that probably took you quite a long time to create, but won’t be worth as much to you as a study aid as they could be. This is simply a waste of time and effort.

You cannot eat up every smidgen of white space on the page writing out questions or summaries and still have a way to read the original text. If you are lucky enough to have a blank page next to the beginning of the chapter or section you are annotating, use this, but keep in mind that when you start writing notes, you aren’t exactly sure how much space you’ll need. Use a decipherable shorthand and write only what you need to convey the meaning in very small print. If you are annotating your own notes, you can make a habit of using only one side of the paper in class, so that if you need to add more notes later, you could use the other side. You can also add a blank page to your notes before beginning the next class date in your notebook so you’ll end up with extra paper for annotations when you study.

Professional resources may come with annotations that can be helpful to you as you work through the various documentation requirements you’ll encounter in college as well. Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab ( OWL ) provides an annotated sample for how to format a college paper according to guidelines in the Modern Language Association (MLA) manual that you can see, along with other annotations.

Adding Needed Additional Explanations to Notes

Marlon was totally organized and ready to take notes in a designated course notebook at the beginning of every philosophy class session. He always dated his page and indicated what the topic of discussion was. He had various colored highlighters ready to denote the different note purposes he had defined: vocabulary in pink, confusing concepts in green, and note sections that would need additional explanations later in yellow. He also used his own shorthand and an impressive array of symbols to indicate questions (red question mark), highly probable test material (he used a tiny bomb exploding here), additional reading suggestions, and specific topics he would ask his instructor before the next class. Doing everything so precisely, Marlon’s methods seemed like a perfect example of how to take notes for success. Inevitably though, by the end of the hour-and-a-half class session, Marlon was frantically switching between writing tools, near to tears, and scouring his notes as waves of yellow teased him with uncertainty. What went wrong?

As with many of us who try diligently to do everything we know how to do for success or what we think we know because we read books and articles on success in between our course work, Marlon is suffering from trying to do too much simultaneously. It’s an honest mistake we can make when we are trying to save a little time or think we can multitask and kill two birds with one stone.

Unfortunately, this particular error in judgement can add to your stress level exponentially if you don’t step back and see it for what it is. Marlon attempted to take notes in class as well as annotate his notes to get them ready for his test preparation. It was too much to do at one time, but even if he could have done all those things during class, he’s missing one critical point about note-taking.

As much as we may want to hurry and get it over with, note-taking in class is just the beginning. Your instructor likely gave you a pre-class assignment to read or complete before coming to that session. The intention of that preparatory lesson is for you to come in with some level of familiarity for the topic under consideration and questions of your own. Once you’re in class, you may also need to participate in a group discussion, work with your classmates, or perform some other sort of lesson-directed activity that would necessarily take you away from taking notes. Does that mean you should ignore taking notes for that day? Most likely not. You may just need to indicate in your notes that you worked on a project or whatever other in-class event you experienced that date.

Very rarely in a college classroom will you engage in an activity that is not directly related to what you are studying in that course. Even if you enjoyed every minute of the class session and it was an unusual format for that course, you still need to take some notes. Maybe your first note could be to ask yourself why you think the instructor used that unique teaching strategy for the class that day. Was it effective? Was it worth using the whole class time? How will that experience enhance what you are learning in that course?

If you use an ereader or ebooks to read texts for class or read articles from the Internet on your laptop or tablet, you can still take effective notes. Depending on the features of your device, you have many choices. Almost all electronic reading platforms allow readers to highlight and underline text. Some devices allow you to add a written text in addition to marking a word or passage that you can collect at the end of your note-taking session. Look into the specific tools for your device and learn how to use the features that allow you to take notes electronically. You can also find apps on devices to help with taking notes, some of which you may automatically have installed when you buy the product. Microsoft’s OneNote, Google Keep, and the Notes feature on phones are relatively easy to use, and you may already have free access to those.

Taking Notes on Non-Text Items (i.e., Tables, Maps, Figures, etc.)

You may also encounter situations as you study and read textbooks, primary sources, and other resources for your classes that are not actually texts. You can still take notes on maps, charts, graphs, images, and tables, and your approach to these non-text features is similar to when you prepare to take notes over a passage of text. For example, if you are looking at the following map, you may immediately come up with several questions. Or it may initially appear overwhelming. Start by asking yourself these questions:

• Who is the intended audience?
• Where is it?
• What time period does it depict?
• What does the map’s legend (the explanation of symbols) include?
• What other information do I need to make sense of this map?

You may want to make an extra copy of a graphic or table before you add annotations if you are dealing with a lot of information. Making sense of all the elements will take time, and you don’t want to add to the confusion.

Returning to Your Notes

Later, as soon as possible after the class, you can go back to your notes and add in missing parts. Just as you may generate questions as you’re reading new material, you may leave a class session or lecture or activities with many questions. Write those down in a place where they won’t get lost in all your other notes.

The exact timing of when you get back to the notes you take in class or while you are reading an assignment will vary depending on how many other classes you have or what other obligations you have in your daily schedule. A good starting place that is also easy to remember is to make every effort to review your notes within 24 hours of first taking them. Longer than that and you are likely to have forgotten some key features you need to include; must less time than that, and you may not think you need to review the information you so recently wrote down, and you may postpone the task too long.

Use your phone or computer to set reminders for all your note review sessions so that it becomes a habit and you keep on top of the schedule.

Your personal notes play a significant role in your test preparation. They should enhance how you understand the lessons, textbooks, lab sessions, and assignments. All the time and effort you put into first taking the notes and then annotating and organizing the notes will be for naught if you do not formulate an effective and efficient way to use them before sectional exams or comprehensive tests.

The whole cycle of reading, note-taking in class, reviewing and enhancing your notes, and preparing for exams is part of a continuum you ideally will carry into your professional life. Don’t try to take short cuts; recognize each step in the cycle as a building block. Learning doesn’t end, which shouldn’t fill you with dread; it should help you recognize that all this work you’re doing in the classroom and during your own study and review sessions is ongoing and cumulative. Practicing effective strategies now will help you be a stronger professional.

What resources can you find about reading and note-taking that will actually help you with these crucial skills? How do you go about deciding what resources are valuable for improving your reading and note-taking skills?

The selection and relative value of study guides and books about note-taking vary dramatically. Ask your instructors for recommendations and see what the library has available on this topic. The following list is not comprehensive, but will give you a starting point for books and articles on note-taking in college.

• College Rules!: How to Study, Survive, and Succeed in College, by Sherri Nist-Olejnik and Jodi Patrick Holschuh. More than just note-taking, this book covers many aspects of transitioning into the rigors of college life and studying.
• Effective Note-taking, by Fiona McPherson. This small volume has suggestions for using your limited time wisely before, during, and after note-taking sessions.
• How to Study in College, by Walter Pauk. This is the book that introduced Pauk’s note-taking suggestions we now call the Cornell Method. It is a bit dated (from the 1940s), but still contains some valuable information.
• Learn to Listen, Listen to Learn 2: Academic Listening and Note-taking, by Roni S. Lebauer. The main point of this book is to help students get the most from college lectures by watching for clues to lecture organization and adapting this information into strong notes.
• Study Skills: Do I Really Need this Stuff?, by Steve Piscitelli. Written in a consistently down-to-earth manner, this book will help you with the foundations of strong study skills, including time management, effective note-taking, and seeing the big picture.
• “What Reading Does for the Mind,” by Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich, 1998, https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/cunningham.pdf
• Adler, Mortimer J. and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1940 .
• Berns, Gregory S., Kristina Blaine, Michael J. Prietula, and Brandon E. Pye. Brain Connectivity. Dec 2013.ahead of print http://doi.org/10.1089/brain.2013.0166

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Help Centre

How to take notes critical reading techniques.

Taking notes is a skill that you develop with practice. There is no right or wrong way. You just need to find a method that suits you, such as using bullet points, mind maps and diagrams, highlighting, annotating or underlining significant words.

You're probably thinking 'Why talk about taking notes' when this section's called "Critical reading techniques"? Well, it's because making notes is an essential part of the reading process. It helps you internalise difficult ideas by putting them into your own words and can help you be more focused during exam revision. You are more likely to remember material you have thought about and made notes on than material you have read passively.

Many people find it effective to take notes in two stages.

• First writing down the main points.
• Then summarising, condensing and organising the notes so that they can be used when writing assignments or revising for exams.

In general, your notes should be brief and to the point. Take time to think about

• what is expected of you, by reviewing the learning outcomes listed in your module materials
• what each assignment requires you to do
• how you learn best, so you can choose the most effective techniques.

If you're given a handout before or during a face-to-face session, use this as the framework for taking notes.

Revisiting your notes helps you learn the material and prepare for assignments. It helps you 'pull together' all the different ideas you have recorded, so you can make cross-links with earlier study.

What to avoid when taking notes

• Don't attempt to write everything down, just reflect the main themes. Aim to get the gist of the topic or the main points.
• Try not to get flustered if you miss something out or come across something you don't understand. Use a question mark to highlight the point in your notes and come back to it later.
• Don't lose track of your purpose in making the notes in the first place - keep focused.
• Don't be concerned about whether anyone else could make sense of your notes, you are the only person who needs to read them.
• Don't try to remember everything you read or heard in a tutorial session, it can't be done.
• Don't forget to revisit and organise your notes and get them systematically arranged so that you can find the information you need when you want it.
• Don't forget to check you have complete references when you revisit your notes, this will save you a lot of time later on if you want to cite particular sources of evidence.
• Don't be afraid of trying different ways of taking notes - try lists, colours, bullet points, underlining, highlighting and mind-mapping. Experimenting with various methods helps you discover the technique that suits you.
• Don't take notes all the time - spend some time at tutorials engaging with the tutor and other students or just thinking about what you're doing.

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© . . .

The Case for the Importance of Taking Notes

Even students with great memories get a boost from notetaking

• M.A., English Literature, California State University - Sacramento
• B.A., English, California State University - Sacramento

Taking notes is a great way to help students identify the importance of concepts covered in class. Even if you have a great memory, you simply won't be able to remember everything the teacher says. A permanent written record that you can refer to later can prove indispensable when it's time to write an essay or take a test on the materials discussed in class.

Literature lectures offer important background information about the works you're studying, including literary terms, details about the author's style, thematic relationships between works and important quotations. The content from literature lectures has a way of appearing on quizzes and essay assignments in ways students least expect them to, which is why note taking is so helpful.

Even if the lecture material doesn't reappear in a testing situation, you may be asked to draw from the knowledge you gained from the lecture for a future class discussion. With that in mind, here are a few tips about how to effectively take notes in your literature class .

Before Class

To prepare for your next class, read the assigned reading material . It's usually a good idea to read the material at least a few days before the assignment is due. If possible, you'll want to read the selection several times and make sure you understand what you're reading. If you have any questions, your textbook may offer a list of suggested readings to help with your understanding. A visit to your library may also offer additional reference resources to answer your questions and further prepare you for class. Your notes from previous class periods may also help to answer your questions.

Also, be sure to take a look at the questions that follow selections in your textbook. The questions help you to re-evaluate the text, and they may help you to understand how the material relates to other works you've read in the course.

During the Literature Class

Be prepared to take notes when you attend your class, and be on time. Bring plenty of paper and pens with you. Write down the relevant date, time, and topic details on your notepaper before the teacher is ready to start. If homework is due, hand it in before the class starts, and then be ready to take notes.

Listen carefully to what the teacher says. Particularly note any discussion about future homework assignments and/or tests. The teacher may also give you an outline of what he or she will be discussing for that day. Remember that you don't have to get down every word that your teacher says. Get enough written down so that you can understand what was said. If there's something that you don't understand, be sure to mark those sections so you can come back to them later.

Since you've read the reading material before class, you should recognize new material: details about the text, the author, the time period, or the genre that wasn't covered in your textbook. You'll want to get as much of this material down as possible because the teacher probably considers it to be important to your understanding of the texts.

Even if the lecture seems disorganized get down as many notes as possible through the lecture. Where there are gaps, or parts of the lecture you don't understand, clarify your understanding of the material by asking questions in class or during the teacher's office hours. You can also ask a classmate for help or find outside reading materials that explain the issue. Sometimes, when you hear the material in a different way, you may understand the concept much more clearly than the first time you heard it. Also, remember, every student learns in a different way. Sometimes, it's better to get a broader perspective--from various sources, both in and out of class.

If you know you have a hard time paying attention, try some preventative measures. Some students find that chewing on gum or a pen helps them to pay attention. Of course, if you're not allowed to chew gum in the class, then that option is out. You can also ask for permission to record the lecture.

Reviewing Your Notes

You have several options for reviewing or revising your notes. Some students type the notes up, and print them up for easy reference, while others just look them over after class and transfer important detail to other tracking devices. Whichever mode of review you prefer, the important thing is that you look over your notes while the lecture is still fresh in your mind. If you have questions, you need to get them answered before you forget what was confusing or hard-to-understand.

Collect your notes in one place. Usually, a three-ring binder is the best place because you can keep your notes with your course outline, class handouts, returned homework assignments and returned tests.

Use a highlighter or some system of making the text stand out. You'll want to make sure that you don't miss the details the teacher gives you about assignments  and tests. If you highlight important items, make sure that you don't highlight everything or else everything seems important. 

Be sure to make note of examples. If the teacher is talking about a quest and then talks about "Tom Jones," you'll want to make note of it, particularly if you know that you'll be reading that book shortly. You may not always understand the context of the discussion if you haven't yet read the work, but it's still important to note that the work is connected with the quest theme.

Don't just review your notes the day before your final exam . Take a look at them periodically throughout the course. You may see patterns that you never noticed before. You may better understand the structure and progression of the course: where the teacher is going and what he or she expects you to have learned by the time the class is over. Often the teacher will put the material on a test just to make sure that students are listening or taking notes. Some teachers will discuss the complete outline of a test, telling students exactly what will appear, but students still fail because they're not paying attention.

Wrapping Up

Before long, you'll get used to taking notes. It really is a skill, but it also depends on the teacher. Sometimes it's difficult to tell whether a teacher's statements are important or just an offhand remark. If all else fails, and you're confused or uncertain about whether you're understanding what is expected of you in the course, ask the teacher. The teacher is the person giving you a grade (in most situations).

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• 10 Do's and Don'ts for Note Taking in Law School
• How To Take Notes
• How To Take Good Biology Notes
• 10 Tips for Art History Students
• Writing Practice Tests While You Study
• How to Take Notes on a Laptop and Should You
• 6 Reasons to Read Before Class
• How to Study for a Test in 5 Days
• Study Tips for Math Homework and Math Tests
• How to Pass Chemistry Class
• Improve Your Reading Speed and Comprehension With the SQ3R Method
• 8 Tips for Taking Notes from Your Reading
• How are College Academics Different from High School?
• Setting Up a Study Schedule
• Preparing for Final Exams

Attention: How To Take Notes For An Essay

• February 6, 2019
• How-to , S , Take notes

I am wondering how students and adults can take notes for writing an essay. A composition or essay may well be the first lengthy writing piece we all learn. Though what you say is more important than how you say in my opinion, that does not mean we cannot learn to improve in the way we can go about writing an essay by taking notes. Notes are just short ideas or points to help remind us or others to begin with, but after taking numerous points, we can expand to holding the main ideas for a more detailed essay, article, project or even a book.

How to take notes for an essay

Form a convincing main idea based on credible logical supports 

Write one or a few short points for each paragraph, keep a logical order from top to bottom so the essay makes sense, follow a structured template (as below) to keep organized, contemplate over a longer time (if available) to note down more and better ideas.

The most important element in writing a successful essay is the quality of the content. It must make logical sense and demonstrate critical thinking. Not writing out of the point is just the beginning. A good writer should provide what the reader wants and if possible beyond. The author of the essay may take short notes to help keep on track, arrange and remind him of the important ideas. I hope you can see the value of learning to take notes for an essay, please read on…

To provide a fair and hopefully correct reasonings to an argument, we should have supports that makes sense. Strong supports can come from undisputed logical deductions of a chain of causes and resulting effects. One familiar type may be a narrative of what happened in an incident and every witness chipped in their coherent and truthful testimonials backed with evidence. More valid points than less will be more convincing, just as a larger statistically experimental size will provide for a more accurate result.

Think of as many supports as you can come up with, note them down and figure out how they may all help in constructing your main argument or statement. Remember we should have convincingly credible evidence or logical reasoning to back up our argument.

Ponder upon the main and important supportive reasonings first. I personally prefer to tackle the difficult part in the beginning.  Take your essay notes in bullet points format so you have an overview structure of how your essay look. Start asking obvious questions such as are there enough good points to support my main statement idea? Are the points relevant, related and make sense? Know that sometimes we have ideas when we write or at times there are triggers in our daily life that prompt or give us good hints or ideas. It is possible our personal viewpoint may shift when we learn more facts and reasonings.

Once we have divided the solution into points and are able to focus on a point, it will be easier for the writer to elaborate more on each point. Each paragraph here can be just an explanation of one support in more detail and may provide more examples. Gather many points if you can. The more relevant and logical points you have to put forward, the more convincing your argument and reflects the effort you put into your writing.

The order may be chronological as in a narrative, numbered list in presenting evidence or follow any sensible flow that lets your reader understand clearly without a doubt in proving your points. This post itself also follows a top-down approach that explains the different points each.

Essay Structure Template 

Introduction paragraph 

• This may be why you come to write this essay and just a few sentences to describe the importance and benefits of this essay.

Main idea paragraph

• Do not write out of point
• This may be a response to a question asked or to state your argument
• Be logical and demonstrate critical thinking in your writing

Paragraphs to elaborate on your main idea with details. 

• This may span a few paragraphs, each with related points
• This may include justifications with supportive evidence and reasonings
• The main idea may have different parts, each to be explained in a paragraph
• Integrate examples (optional). Offer examples if possible. They are good analogies to illustrate and substantiate a point quickly and even stir up intrigue among readers, especially if there is a story element to it. Comparisons work well too. Put them in only if appropriate and stay relevant to your cause

Conclusion paragraph

• The concluding paragraph rounds up the discussion with closure but should imply the potential for future possibilities
• Portraying here how this essay fits in like a puzzle of a bigger picture will also help your readers better understand and appreciate the meaning or benefit of your essay
• Include citations across your essays where appropriate or below the conclusion. Citation example format: Morem, S. (2005) or (Matthews, 1999). Paraphrase while crediting the authors’ ideas in citations. 
• This template is only a suggestion. You may modify it accordingly to your needs, for example, there may be a few main ideas and each idea paragraph starts with one idea followed by a couple of sentences about supporting evidence.

Essay writing example in notes form

Topic: Money is the root of all evil.

Introduction:

• I am pondering what should be the correct reasonings for this classic topic of discussion or hopefully at least a step closer to the truth
• The purpose of this writing is to pinpoint or draw closer and attempt in the hope to address this popular question or assumption in the right way, and not circumvent or mislead by burying the reader with tons of related but useless information, half-truths, or even any completely irrelevant ideas that come to mind. Answer the question correctly to your ability first and related points of usefulness may come later if you have time but take note not to overdo it as your main good points may suffice to excel.

Main argument:

• Money is not the root. 

Supportive reasonings:

• An obsessive person may commit grievous actions against others just to have someone he/she desired. Is that not a crime?
• An angry and revengeful man may plot against someone or even commit murder. Is that not evil?
• An ignorant, prejudiced person may deprive others with different skin colors or country origin of equal opportunities or even commit genocide for personal egoistic pride, interest, and gain. Is that right?
• All the above may not have anything to do with banknotes in essence.
• Banknotes are made of paper or other materials, are these raw materials evil or it is the greed of people for money that drives them to commit heinous acts? If we remove a certain external entity from our lives, does that guarantee we will not have any bad or evil thoughts, speech, and deeds? 
• Money is not the root of all evil. It is evil character qualities that propel people to evil deeds, not paper. 
• The concept of money actually stems from trading – an instrument meant to promote fairness to all parties concerned, not for the opposite intentions. Again, it is the corrupted individual’s own greed that views money as a means for his/her twisted purpose.
• Instead, we should learn to be better people by being generous, patient, unbiased, and so on. 

Related points:

• I was also told there is no right or wrong answer. Again, I disagree. I understand an educator’s intention to encourage students to write. 
• However, in this case, there is clearly a correct answer or at least this topic statement is a wrong assumption.
• If right and wrong apply to a moral concern, money is not even the correct identification of moral nature. Paper and digital notes are physical tangibles or a type of financial instrument, not a character flaw. Different from apple and cat.

Note: The notes you take can be shorter, the above is just for illustration purposes. Once you have all the points down, elaborate them into full sentences and add on more ideas when you can as you write away.

It takes time to write even a single idea. And a good idea may not come at the right time in a preferred chronological order. Contemplate your topic with different angles and perspectives over time, and trust that your effort will pay off. Writing is also hard work. Some may portray it as fun and enjoyable, but it may not be all that at all times. Acknowledge the fact that we face writer’s block at one time or another. Just as a student has good and bad studying experiences. Writing (essay notes or otherwise) is a skill that improves over time, so you may yourself able to do more when you have more practice. 

Observe when and in which situations you can better think critically without distractions. Take advantage of these times with the right conditions to study or work. It may be different for everyone. Some may prefer an early bird morning fresh session, some after a cup of warm tea while others with inspirational background music. Also, learn your limits and stop when you feel tired and out of ideas, but be diligent to pick up and continue forth when ready.

Why take notes for an essay?

Take notes of our ideas before you forget them. You can decide which ones to keep or arrange them later. One idea may seem easy to grasp, but when multiplied to ten or even thousands as in a book series then altogether it becomes a collection of writing works.

I remember I was taught and did quickly scribbled away ideas on blank papers provided in examinations. I supposed that helped me not to forget the main answer ideas that come to mind when I read the questions. I hope this will help you too if you are a student. But these notes should take seconds only to take down. It is possible to take notes when the ideas came over time while you are busy with other questions. One exam technique is to read the main essay questions first (start with the most difficult ones), quickly take short notes of your opinion with support. Arrange them in a logical order.

For home essays, taking notes may help to stop procrastination. It is easier to get started with short sentences or points, after which you may keep going writing a paragraph and more. Plus good ideas can come intermittently after some contemplation on the topic, and taking point notes are a step towards essay completion. 

Tip for when to take notes: In the morning when you feel fresh and relaxed. By evening, you may be exhausted or burnout of ideas to write. It may be that you are often contemplating the same topic, even in your dreams, then jot down the ideas whenever you can.

Tips for taking essay notes to memory:

• Drink green tea in the morning before your essay to see if you experience an improved difference in physical and mental conditions. A study here  (Schmidt, Hammann, Wolnerhanssen, Meyer-Gerspach, Drewe, Beglinger, Borgwardt. 2014) has beneficial findings between green tea and memory, even dementia.
• Brighten Spatial memory in essay notes technique: Visualise different keywords appearing at different appropriate locations (like landmarks on a map) of your essays like glowing brightly each word location from top to bottom. This can be effective when several ideas came up and you do not have time or tools to note them down yet. Follow the ‘illuminated’ words path trail to note down quickly when you can.

Please take a look at the different essay forms and styles on Wikipedia essay. This article may benefit more for those who had writing experience. Take particular note of the mentioned (my favorite) cause and effect in critically thinking about different causes and consequences. An essay article may incorporate different forms and styles to constitute a stronger argument.

Taking notes can be effective in getting your work done, be it an essay or even book writing. Notes are taken one at a time, but once they accumulate and even snowball into a long piece of writing, it will not look like a note that was started. All the posts here on TakeNotesGuide.com  are written mostly or completely in a note app Evernote. 

Also, never plagiarise other people’s work. Write original essays. Expound your own ideas and explain why they are reasonable and sensible in your own words. We may learn from others but make our own creative and new derivative works out of it. Be forthright and honorable. 

Learning how to write essays or compositions can open the door to a lifetime of writing. Many people write for a hobby or a living. A career in writing can be a journalist, author, technical writer, editor, screenplay writer, researcher, blogger, freelance writer, proofreader, etc.  

Write truthfully with kindness so may all be good people and be bestowed with love, light, and happiness in their lives. Good luck!

Related Questions

Is there a game to promote critical thinking or story writing.

60 Seconds What’s Your Story is a board game (Age 12+) that can inspire and kickstart a game fun experience by telling stories.

Dr. Eureka Speed Logic Game (Age 8+) can help make logical thinking a fun process to associate with. It is also a family or play-yourself game.

10 critical thinking card games (Age 8-10) by Elaine Richard. She also has 10 vocabulary and 10 reading comprehension card games too. This may be more for classroom activities. 

All are available on Amazon.

How to write a better essay?

Personally, I would think the writer has to demonstrate an in-depth understanding and provide thoughtful insight into the discussion. The essay may be both informative with factual sources and reasonings but also inspirational with words of encouragement or empathy. It may also be an essay where the writer shares a personally emotional story and a heartfelt lesson he/she wishes to share for the benefit of others. An essay with an unexpected twist in a realistic story that captures the reader’s attention and yet underlines an outstanding moral quality also qualifies in my opinion. 

How to write an essay introduction?

This can be stating the reasons for and importance of why you are writing this essay. Providing a background to this writing also works. Perhaps a short discussion of the benefits will intrigue the reader to read on.

How to get an A on an essay?

I am not an expert grader but consider if the following makes sense. The essay should have to be outstanding, as it provides a personally unique relevant viewpoint, thought-provoking ideas or shows correct critical thinking uncommon amongst others. How would you grade As among hundreds of essay answers? Like everyone else, graders are just looking out for the quality of content.

Where to take notes?

A place you feel comfortable is preferred. Not too hot or cold, with access to basic necessities such as water, food, and a washroom. I would recommend also a quiet place with clean air and natural scenery for breaks. It can be your room, train seat, or your nearby cafes and tea houses. Cat lovers may seek out and stay close to cats whilst taking notes for study or work.

Is there an essay template for kids?

A simple Google docs free template here . 

How to translate an essay into English?

For those who write in a foreign language, you may use google translate  for the basic translation of simple sentences. However, it is still recommended to get a human translation service for your essays such as  Gengo  or freelance Upwork translators .

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