Writing Notes

Note-taking is the heart of research.  Notes taken for a research paper will fall into the following categories:

·        Personal notes:  expressions of your own ideas and thoughts pertaining to your subject and in response to your reading.  Reflect on findings, make connections, record discoveries, explore another point of view, and identify prevailing views and thoughts

·        Quotations notes:  capture the authoritative voices of the experts on the topic, feature essential statements, offer conflicting points of view, show the dialogue that exists about the topic and prove that your have researched the subject carefully.

–  select material that is important and well-phrased; not common knowledge

–  use quotation marks

–  use exact words

–  quote key sentences or short passages, but not whole paragraphs

–  quote from both primary and secondary sources

·        Paraphrase notes:  requires you to restate in your won words the thought, meaning, and attitude of someone else.  Paraphrase maintains your voice or style in the paper and helps to avoid endless strings of direct quotations.

            Five rules of paraphrasing:

·        rewrite the original in about the same number of words

·        Provide an in-text citations to the source

·        Retain exceptional words and phrases from the original by enclosing them within quotations marks.

·        Preserve the tone of the original by suggesting moods of satire, anger, humor, etc.

·        Put the original aside while paraphrasing to avoid copying word for word.

·        NOTE:  When readers see an in-text citation bout no quotation marks, they will assume that you are paraphrasing, not quoting.

·        Summary notes:  describes and rewrites the source material without great concern for style or expression.  These notes record material and statistics that have marginal value for your study, which note an interesting position of a source on a related topic, or to reference several works that address the same issue.  Mark in your notes with quotations any key phrasing that you cannot paraphrase.  Provide documentation.

·        Précis notes:  requires you to capture in just a few words the ideas of an entire paragraph, section, or chapter.  Condense the original with precision and directness.  Reduce a long paragraph into a sentence, or an article into a paragraph.  Preserve the mood of the original.  Write the précis in your own words while retaining key phrases or words.  Provide documentation.

·        Field notes:  charts, notes from experiments, research journals, lab notebooks, and questionnaires.  Interviews require careful-note taking to insure accurate quoting.