8 Taking notes

Note taking is not an end in itself, but a means towards an end. You take notes to help you remember information, to facilitate the recollection process, and to know precisely where the information came from.

If you write your essay from notes, rather than from photocopies of your source material, you can organize the material, have it in front of you in the appropriate order, and flip through your notes as you write. You will be less likely to omit important information (because you have forgotten where you read it, or even that you have it).

Taking notes will help you to keep track of your ideas as you do your research. In the end, you likely will not use all of your notes, but taking them will guide your research and will help you to link together various historians’ works when you are ready to write your paper.

Keep your notes until you get your marked essay back – they could come in handy to answer any questions raised by the marker.

A good note-taking system:

• Allows you to quickly find (or re-find) any piece of information.
• Tells you exactly where the information comes from (its source – make sure to note down both the book/article where the information comes from and the page number on which you found it).
• Reminds you whether the notes are in your own words, or are verbatim transcriptions of the sources (to prevent inadvertent plagiarism).