Bedford/St. Martin's History Research Room Frame

A Student's Online Guide to History
HOW TO RESEARCH A PAPER: HOW TO TAKE NOTES FROM YOUR SOURCES

Deciding What Notes to Take
The first rule in note taking is to know in advance what you are looking for. In order to avoid either taking note after note that you will never need or failing to note things that you will, you should have a clear understanding of your topic and the kind of evidence you are seeking. This is especially difficult at the outset of your research when your understanding of your topic is still somewhat vague. It is thus important to define the scope and content of your topic as quickly as possible or your research and note taking will wander, and valuable time will be lost.

When to use a direct quotation
As you go through a book, you will find portions that you will want to refer to in your own research paper. You will want to note the author's general idea or perhaps even record the actual words used. While overreliance on quotations can be a weakness, if you feel that a quote is necessary:

Copy exactly the words in the book.

Be sure that the meaning of the words you quote is clear and that you have not altered the author's point by quoting it out of context. If you wish to use a quotation, say, to show that Robert E. Lee was a good military strategist, a quotation such as "Lee was more admired by the average soldier than any other commanding officer" doesn,t make that point because it refers to his popularity, not his generalship. Moreover, if the following sentence in the book is "However, his strategic decisions were not usually equal to those of Union army commanders," then you have actually altered the author's point by taking it out of its original context. Make sure you understand the author's meaning before you use a quotation.

Be sure not to overquote. Do not quote more material than is necessary to convey the desired point clearly and accurately.

Never quote something simply because you find it difficult to express in your own words. You will have to compose the idea in your own words when you write your paper, and it is best to think about the meaning of your research material now.

The most important points made by an author usually cannot be summed up in easily quotable form. When you want to record general arguments and conclusions, it is best to write your own paraphrase or summary of particular points. If the author has spent several pages relating the decline in trade between Spain and Mexico to the Wars of Mexican Independence, you may want to summarize the findings by noting that the author feels that the diminishing economic tie between colony and mother country was one of the major factors leading to Mexican independence. If you wish to note the evidence itself, you may want to paraphrase the author's description of the decline in trade with several sentences of your own that include the main factors of this decline.

How to Use Index Cards
Whether you are quoting an author's exact words or summarizing a point, the rules of note taking are the same. As you read, it is best to have a pile of index cards beside you (4X6 or 5X8). When you come to something you want to note, at the top of the card, write:

The author's name
The book title
The page number or numbers

If you are taking notes on a journal or newspaper article, you will need to record such information as date, volume number, section, and page number. The exact page numbers are essential because you will have to use them when you write your footnotes. If your quote or paraphrase covers more than one page from your source, be sure to make that fact clear on your note card. Also, it is essential to place each paraphrase or quotation on a separate card so that you can arrange them by period or subject or topic when you prepare your paper. Placing a brief topic heading in the corner of each card will make such arrangement easier.

Some students have begun to take notes on their computers. In this case, you still need to take down all of the same information that you would have put on index cards. Also, be sure to learn about the searching ability of your word processing program so that you can code your notes in a way that enables you to organize them by category.

Writing a note for a direct quotation

Be sure to use quotation marks and to copy the quotation word for word.

If you are quoting something that the author has quoted, you must be sure to point this out when you use the material and to identify the original source. Be sure to include in your note an introduction to the quoted material in your own words, stating who said it (if other than the author) and in what context. This will ensure that you use it properly in your paper

If a quotation is very long and if there are parts that relate to matters other than the one you are referring to, then you may omit portions of the original quote by inserting ellipses~three periods ( ... )~in the quoted material. For example, if the quotation reads "Feudalism, despite later idealizations of it, was maintained by an oppressive social order," you may want to leave out "despite later idealizations of it," and quote the sentence as "Feudalism . . . was maintained by an oppressive social order." If the portion omitted is the end of a sentence, this is indicated by inserting four periods ~three to indicate omission and the fourth to indicate the end of the original sentence. In this case, the closing quotation mark appears after the fourth period.

Never omit anything if doing so would change the meaning of the material. If the sentence had read "Feudalism in its later stages in Moravia was maintained by an oppressive social order," the entire sentence would have to be quoted, or its meaning would be seriously altered.

To give a clearer sense of what note taking involves, there are two sample note cards in Figure 6. The first contains a quotation from a book and the second a paraphrasing of several paragraphs from an article.