How to Take Reading Notes
Created | Updated Jul 28, 2003
Remembering what you read will help you in your schoolwork, and knowing how to take good reading notes will help you remember what you read.
Make sure you give yourself enough time to take notes. The time you spend on notes will pay off with less review time and it will help your memory.
Write down the date, and write full bibliographic information next to the title, author, date, including publisher, city, publication, date of publication, and volume number for journal articles.
Write your notes in outline form to give structure to the material. Break it into related sections and subsections.
Use the book (or article) structure as the structure for your notes. For example, chapters could be assigned major headings and chapter sections could be assigned subheadings.
Make note of anything that is central to the author's argument. Try to avoid writing trivial things. The important points are usually in the introductory and concluding paragraphs.
Make sure you distinguish facts and opinions, and quotations from summaries. That way you will clearly know which is which when you review your notes.
Review your notes the next day, and look over them again a few days later. This is a good way to remember the material in a time-efficient way.
If you are taking notes for a research paper, consider using index cards. Remember to list the bibliographic information on a separate, numbered card.
One way of deciding what is important is to "cheat" by reading the conclusion first so that you'll know what's relevant as soon as you run across it in the text.
Try to use abbreviations in your notes. For example, an up arrow for "increase".
Make sure you give yourself enough time to take notes. The time you spend on notes will pay off with less review time and it will help your memory.
Write down the date, and write full bibliographic information next to the title, author, date, including publisher, city, publication, date of publication, and volume number for journal articles.
Write your notes in outline form to give structure to the material. Break it into related sections and subsections.
Use the book (or article) structure as the structure for your notes. For example, chapters could be assigned major headings and chapter sections could be assigned subheadings.
Make note of anything that is central to the author's argument. Try to avoid writing trivial things. The important points are usually in the introductory and concluding paragraphs.
Make sure you distinguish facts and opinions, and quotations from summaries. That way you will clearly know which is which when you review your notes.
Review your notes the next day, and look over them again a few days later. This is a good way to remember the material in a time-efficient way.
If you are taking notes for a research paper, consider using index cards. Remember to list the bibliographic information on a separate, numbered card.
One way of deciding what is important is to "cheat" by reading the conclusion first so that you'll know what's relevant as soon as you run across it in the text.
Try to use abbreviations in your notes. For example, an up arrow for "increase".
