Taking Notes for Others
Taking Notes for Someone Else
These are some practical suggestions for taking notes for someone else, as well as strategies to help you improve your own notetaking abilities.
General Info: • Be sure of your purpose and the speaker's purpose. • Attend all lectures. • Sit up front so you can see and hear better. Format: • Record the date, place, topic/title and presenter. • Number your pages. • Use dark ink and write on one side of the page. • Use a double entry notetaking system (see "Cornell Notetaking System" handout) • Write neatly. Make notes complete and clear enough to understand when you come back to them. • Use shorthand ('Fe' for iron, '=' for equals, '@' for at, etc.) and abbreviations. Feel free to develop your own set of abbreviations, but please put a key at the top of the page so your notes can be understood. • Highlight important items with asterisks(*) or draw circles or boxes around critical info. Mark important ideas, terms, concepts with different colors, underlines, or asterisks. Indentation, underscoring and starring are also effective for indicating relative importance of items. Show uncertainty with a circled question mark. • Leave plenty of white space for later additions. Skip lines. Leave space between main ideas. What to write: • Definitely copy: * Anything written on the board or presented on an overhead. * Any info that is repeated or emphasized. Ways to emphasize include: tone or gesture, repetition, illustration on board, reference to text, and use of cue words such as: finally, remember, most important, another cause, etc. * All numbered or listed items. * All terms and definitions. * Examples. * New words and ideas. • If
These are some practical suggestions for taking notes for someone else, as well as strategies to help you improve your own notetaking abilities.
General Info: • Be sure of your purpose and the speaker's purpose. • Attend all lectures. • Sit up front so you can see and hear better. Format: • Record the date, place, topic/title and presenter. • Number your pages. • Use dark ink and write on one side of the page. • Use a double entry notetaking system (see "Cornell Notetaking System" handout) • Write neatly. Make notes complete and clear enough to understand when you come back to them. • Use shorthand ('Fe' for iron, '=' for equals, '@' for at, etc.) and abbreviations. Feel free to develop your own set of abbreviations, but please put a key at the top of the page so your notes can be understood. • Highlight important items with asterisks(*) or draw circles or boxes around critical info. Mark important ideas, terms, concepts with different colors, underlines, or asterisks. Indentation, underscoring and starring are also effective for indicating relative importance of items. Show uncertainty with a circled question mark. • Leave plenty of white space for later additions. Skip lines. Leave space between main ideas. What to write: • Definitely copy: * Anything written on the board or presented on an overhead. * Any info that is repeated or emphasized. Ways to emphasize include: tone or gesture, repetition, illustration on board, reference to text, and use of cue words such as: finally, remember, most important, another cause, etc. * All numbered or listed items. * All terms and definitions. * Examples. * New words and ideas. • If