Note-Taking/Chapter 3

by Samuel Swayze Seward

Layout 2

CHAPTER III
HOW TO ORGANIZE NOTES
NOTES FROM READING

Why Organization Helps.—When we pass from the simpler task of condensing a single idea to the more complex one of condensing a whole series of ideas, we meet the problem of organizing notes. Unless special pains be taken, too easily shall we fall into the error of putting down each point as of equal importance with every other. The most obvious way of doing this is to crowd everything into solid paragraphs, making it very difficult, on a later reading, to pick out from the mass the particular point wanted. But the opposite extreme is quite as confusing,—giving each new idea a separate paragraph all to itself. The eye, to be sure, catches a point more readily, but the mind gets no help in relating one to another. When, however, the larger topics are put conspicuously and the smaller are shown to be subordinate, both purposes of note-taking are accomplished: the notes themselves are more accessible for practical use in review, and the mind, in making them, is more alert to grasp the larger plan of the thought.

How the Text Indicates Plan.—At this point it is profitable to pause a little for the better realization of how plan may be made clear. Should the author present us with a tabulated outline of his subject, as is done in tables of contents, we should get his purpose at a glance—so many main points, each elaborated with such and such subordinate topics. We assume, of course, that the author had such an outline in mind. The question then becomes, How does he communicate it to the reader? Very little help, as a rule, does he give the reader's eye. To be sure, paragraphs mark a change of subject, but whether they introduce main or subordinate topics does not ordinarily appear on the surface. Exceptions, of course, occur, when paragraph headings are used, or when the members of a series are definitely indicated by numbers; but it is not the common practice to employ such helps. More useful, and more to be relied on, are the hints that an author gives in the transition from one paragraph to another. Sometimes he definitely announces what the next topic is to be; sometimes, by gathering many points into a summary, he indicates that an important main division is now to follow. Paragraphs occasionally, more often sentences, frequently merely words or slight phrases, signal a change of topic, and indicate the nature of what is next to be expected.

Yet, when all these hints to eye and mind have been supplied, the greater part in determining the plan of an article is left to the discernment of the reader. He must recognize by its very nature a certain topic as important, and observe when the writer leaves the larger thought to take up some particular aspect of it. Therein lies a special need for alertness in the reader, not alone that he may grasp accurately the thought he reads, but quite as much that he seize instantly every hint of larger purpose, revealing itself in an outlined arrangement and sequence of topics. The outlined plan from which the author worked, but which is now lost sight of in his completed article, is thus abstracted and reconstructed in the reader's mind; the latter has reversed the process of writing, and reduced the ideas again to their simplest terms.

All this may be illustrated by examining Chapter II of a book entitled The English Religious Drama, by Miss Katharine Lee Bates. The subject is a description of the "Miracle Plays" of mediæval England. After an introductory part linking this chapter to the one preceding, a paragraph opens with the words: "By the time we find the English Miracle Cycles in full career, the clergy had ceased to be the customary actors." We need not stop to state the complete thought now, but the topic is plain,—actors. When we find the opening of the next paragraph containing the words " . . . preparations began at once. Every guild became responsible. . . . " the subject of the next topic is instantly clear. And so, as we go on to observe the topics, Assignment of Plays to Guilds, The Miracle Play Stage, Costumes, Properties,—we are aware of how naturally they all fall into a sequence, leading up to a passage on the reverential attitude of the people toward the plays. The opening words of the next paragraph bid us pause,—"As a representative Miracle Cycle I would select the Towneley Mysteries, sometimes styled The Widkirk or Woodkirk Plays." Here, evidently, the author intends to illustrate the subjects and methods of dramatic portrayal by describing a typical cycle of miracle plays. And so indeed it proves. The cycle begins with the play of the Creation, introducing the Old Testament series, leads on to that of Cæsar Augustus, introducing the New Testament series, and ends finally with that of the Last Judgment, closing the entire cycle. But before we have gone very far in this part, we have discovered a point in the general plan that was not clear at first; namely, that the first sections all dealt with the methods of presenting miracle plays in general, whereas the latter part is devoted to describing a particular series of plays in order. The complete outline, then, takes shape for the first time in our mind, and its briefest form might be indicated thus:

Introd. Dramatic Quality of Miracle Plays
Body. I. Methods of Presenting Plays
Actors
Preparation for Plays
Assignment of Plays to Guilds
The Miracle Play Stage
The Miracle Play Costumes
The Miracle Play Properties
Reverential Attitude of the People
Body. II. Description of a Representative Cycle
1. Old Testament Plays Play of Creation, etc.
2. New Testament Plays

How to Express Plan.—That an underlying plan is to be looked for in an article, and that alert intelligence will find it, will perhaps be clear from what has just been said. And it is equally apparent that whether the plan be simple, as in our example, or elaborate, the principle is the same. But how to transfer to paper the plan as it unfolds itself to us; that is the question that next awaits a practical solution.

Indenting Minor Parts.—To group jottings upon separate phases of a subject into distinct paragraphs is, of course, the simplest and most useful of devices. But more useful yet is the practice of going a step further, extending the points of main importance the full width of the page, and indenting with larger margins the points of clearly subordinate value. Jottings subordinate to these latter may be written with yet larger margins, and so on as far as is convenient. Judgment and economy, of course, will guard against the abuse of the plan, resulting in a series of too deep indentions, that leave the pages gaping while the notes huddle in the sides and corners. In this system of indention a variation from the common practice of paragraphing will perhaps be of value. The first line of main paragraphs may, according to customary usage, be indented more than the succeeding lines; but if the subordinate paragraphs be of more than one line, it is well to bring all the lines nearly to the same margin. The result is that unused marginal space is economized, and the eye clearly separates matter of different values into well- distinguished, solid blocks. Thus:

Those in favor of national conservation believe:

That the water power companies monopolize permanently rights that belong to the people as a whole;

That government ownership would result in cheaper rates for power.

Numbering a Series.—Such a system does very well for a beginning; but we find advantage often in supplementing it, by heading divisions of equal rank with a series of numbers or letters. Sometimes it seems helpful to extend this practice, from the main divisions down to the smallest of the subdivisions, reserving for each rank its own kind of symbol. In such a case it is natural for each writer to prefer a system devised for his own convenience and suited to his own tastes; and so long as that system is simple and consistent it will serve his purpose well. One such system, that perhaps has advantage over others, can be specially recommended. Headings of main importance are designated by Roman numerals; those of the next rank by capital letters; those of lower value by Arabic numerals; and so on, alternating numerals and letters as far as desired. The system extended to reasonable limits might then be represented thus:

II.
II.
II.A.
II.B.
II.B.1.
II.B.2.
II.B.2.a.
II.B.2.b.
II.B.2.b.(1)
II.B.2.b.(2)
II.B.2.b.(2)(a)
II.B.2.b.(2)(b)

To have some such system definitely worked out, ready for instant use, is clearly an advantage. Its practical value depends largely on the common sense with which it is used. If notes are not clearly indented, an appropriate sign prefixed to each division helps the eye to distinguish the rank to which that division properly belongs. But when the system of increasing margins is consistently used, a glance makes the matter instantly clear, and there seems to be no good reason for prefixing signs to each and every division. The signs may then better be reserved as a means of special emphasis. Thus, should a subject develop itself gradually, by a natural succession of stages, the indention system is sufficient. But if at any point the number of divisions into which a topic falls becomes significant, the fact may be emphasized by the further use of signs,—Roman numerals to designate a series in the main paragraphs, capital letters in those of next lower rank, and so on down. The supplementary system of signs may thus be used intermittently, yet consistently.

Leaving Blank Lines.—In case two divisions of notes need to be separated from each other, instead of being connected in a series, it is convenient to indicate the change by leaving a line or so blank. Such occasions arise when there is a sharp break between the introduction of an article and the body, or between the body and the conclusion. An abrupt digression may be signalled by the same method.

Underscoring for Emphasis.—Yet another device of much practical helpfulness is to underscore headings or phrases that should, for some special reason, catch the eye. Double, or even treble underscoring, of course, increases the emphasis so much the more. And there is this great advantage in the device, that if at any point in taking notes we observe a greater significance in preceding headings than we did at the time of recording them, we may go back instantly and underscore them, bringing out, if need be, different degrees of importance in the several passages. Underscoring, however, is a device that must be used moderately if it is to prove truly useful. When used too constantly, it creates uniformity rather than contrast, and so defeats its own purpose.

Bracketing Digressions.—One contingency in the organization of notes remains to be provided for; namely, interjected passages that interrupt, without seriously disturbing, a systematic outline. The author pauses to illustrate his point, to comment on it, to cite authority, to interject a query. Parentheses or brackets will indicate at once the relation of such a passage to its context. Brief digressions in a paragraph of notes are best designated by parentheses; so also citations, and references to books or articles. But if the digression or comment be important, especially if it be capable of organization, square brackets, aided by appropriate spacing, will conveniently separate it from the main body of notes.

In the application of all these devices we shall find ourselves at liberty to modify in one respect a practice that has been already commended. Clearness requires, as has been said, that ideas when condensed in notes should take the form of complete sentences, not mere headings or phrases. Yet when an idea is related to its subordinate topics, headings alone are sufficient, so long as in combination they make complete sense. Either of the following forms, for example, fulfils the requirements perfectly: The systems employed in American colleges are:

1. The fixed curriculum;
2. The free elective system;
3. A compromise between the two.

Methods employed in determining a student's course:

1. The entire curriculum is prescribed;
2. All the courses are elective;
3. Certain courses are prescribed and the rest are elective.

NOTES FROM LECTURES

It is one thing to analyze a printed article and set it forth properly organized, and quite another to catch and reduce to order the flowing, slippery thoughts of a spoken lecture. Experience, however, teaches us that listening for notes is a trade that has its own tricks, and he will be most successful that understands and makes the most effective use of them.

How to Use a Syllabus.— The greater part of the difficulty disappears, of course, when an outline of the lecture is in the hands of the listener in the form of a syllabus. The topics are therein given in their order, the references clearly set down, and the scope and plan of the entire lecture is apparent at a glance. Yet even under these circumstances a question arises for settlement. What shall be the relation between the printed syllabus and the jotted notes? Shall the notes be separate from the syllabus, a sort of supplement to them? Or shall the syllabus be incorporated into the notes, so that the whole becomes in effect an expanded syllabus complete in itself? The former is the easier in the doing, the latter the more useful when done. And the latter has the added advantage—and an important one—of setting a higher standard in note-taking, and giving practice in attaining to it. The double process of copying and expanding the syllabus keeps the mind constantly alive to the organization of the lecture. Assume, for example, that the outline of the chapter upon the English Miracle Plays, as given above, is in the listener's hands as a printed syllabus; the completed notes might then take some such form as this:

Introd. Dramatic Quality of Miracle Plays.

Body. Methods of Presenting Plays.

Actors. Changing the performance of church plays from inside the churches to outside gave rise to a class of secular actors working under the direction of the trades guilds.

Preparation for Plays. Plays were staged under directious of two pageant masters, and announced in public proclamations.

Etc.

Hints for Recognizing Plan.—But more frequently the notes must be taken without any help from syllabus sheets, and then all the resources for quickly seizing upon and recording the plan of the lecture must be brought into play. We watch not alone for the significant ideas of the lecture itself, its substance, but as well for the indications of plan, the transitions, which apprise us of the relation that the coming idea bears to what has gone before. So far as we can thus anticipate the general plan, well; but where we are uncertain, or where a later passage corrects a former mistake, we must be ready to go back, interlining a neglected heading, perhaps underscoring it for emphasis, numbering an unobserved series, bracketing a digression,—using every convenient device for perfecting what did not appear in its true relation at the first.

A tangible illustration will show most clearly how all these devices may be put into practice. Let us suppose that Mr. James Bryce is lecturing, using that part of his American Commonwealth that deals with "The Uniformity of American Life." As we read, we shall consider ourselves listening, and shall pause to jot down such notes as suggest themselves. The written style of the passage is, of course, more compact than spoken language would be, giving less time for making our notes; yet in spite of that the passage will serve admirably. The result, then, might be somewhat like this:

The Uniformity of American Life

To the pleasantness of American life there is one, and perhaps only one, serious drawback—its uniformity. Those who have been struck by the size of America, and by what they have heard of its restless excitement, may be surprised by the word.

The drawback to the pleasantness of American life is its uniformity.

They would have guessed that an unquiet changefulness and turmoil were the disagreeable to be feared. But uniformity, which the European visitor begins to note when he has travelled for a month or two, is the feature of the country which Englishmen who have lived long there, and Americans who are familiar with Europe, most frequently revert to when asked to say what is the "crook in their lot."

It is felt in many ways. I will name a few.

It is felt in the aspects of nature. All the natural features of the United States are on a larger scale than those of Europe.

Felt in
I. Aspects of Nature:

The four chief mountain chains are each of them longer than the Alps. Of the gigantic rivers and of those inland seas we call the Great Lakes one need not speak.

natural features on a large scale—
mountains, rivers.

The centre of the continent is occupied by a plain larger than the western half of Europe. In the Mississippi Valley, from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Superior, there is nothing deserving to be called a hill, though, as one moves westward from the great river, long, soft undulations in the boundless prairie begin to appear. Through vast stretches of country one finds the same physical character maintained with little change the same strata, the same vegetation, a generally similar climate. From the point where you leave the Alleghanies at Pittsburg, until after crossing the Missouri, you approach the still untilled prairie of the West, a railway run of some thousand miles, there is a uniformity of landscape greater than could be found along any one hundred miles of railway run in Western Europe.

Vast plains of Mississippi Valley—

Vast plains of Mississippi Valley—Everywhere the same nearly flat country, over which you cannot see far, because you are little raised above it, the same fields and crops, the same rough, wooden fences,

flat,

the same thickets of the same bushes along the stream edges, with here and there a bit of old forest; the same solitary farm-houses and straggling wood-built villages.

monotonous.

And when one has passed beyond the fields and farm-houses, there is an even more unvaried stretch of slightly rolling prairie, smooth and bare, till after five hundred miles the blue line of the Rocky Mountains rises upon the western horizon. . . .

When we turn from the aspects of nature to the cities of men, the uniformity is even more remarkable.

II. The Cities:

With eight

or nine exceptions to be mentioned presently, American cities differ from one another only herein, that some of them are built more with brick than with wood, and others more with wood than with brick. In all else they are alike, both great and small. In all the same wide streets, crossing at right angles, ill-paved, but planted along the sidewalks with maple trees whose autumnal scarlet surpasses the brilliance of any European foliage.

right-angled streets,

In all the same shops, arranged on the same plan, the same Chinese laundries, with Li Kow visible through the window,

laundries,

the same ice-cream stores, the same large hotels with seedy men hovering about in the cheerless entrance-hall,

hotels.

the same street cars passing to and fro with passengers clinging to the door-steps, the same locomotives ringing their great bells as they clank slowly down the middle of the street. I admit that in external aspect there is a sad monotony in the larger towns of England also. Compare English cities with Italian cities, and most of the former seem like one another, incapable of being, so to speak, individualized as you individualize a man with a definite character and aspect unlike that of other men. Take the Lancashire towns, for instance, large and prosperous places.

[English cities much alike.

You cannot individualize Bolton or Wigan, Oldham or Bury, except by trying to remember that Bury is slightly less rough than Oldham, and Wigan a thought more grimy than Bolton. But in Italy every city has its character, its memories, its life and achievements, wrought into the pillars of its churches and the towers that stand along its ramparts. Siena is not like Perugia, nor Perugia like Orvieto;

Italian cities much unlike.

Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Ancona, Osimo, standing along the same coast within seventy miles of one another, have each of them a character, a sentiment, what one may call an idiosyncrasy, which comes vividly back to us at the mention of its name. Now, what English towns are to Italian, that American towns are to English. They are in some ways pleasanter; they are cleaner, there is less poverty, less squalor, less darkness. But their monotony haunts one like a nightmare.

American: English:: English: Italian.]

Even the irksomeness of finding the streets named by numbers becomes insufferable. It is doubtless convenient to know by the number how far up the city the particular street is. But you cannot give any sort of character to Twenty-ninth Street, for the name refuses to lend itself to any association. There is something wearisomely hard and bare in such a system.

I return joyfully to the exceptions. Boston has a character of her own with her beautiful Common,

Exceptions: Boston—Common,

her smooth environing waters, her Beacon Hill crowned by the gilded. dome of the State House,

Beacon Hill, etc.

and Bunker Hill, bearing the monument of the famous fight. New York, besides a magnificent position, has in the grandeur of the buildings and the tremendous rush of men and vehicles

New York—great buildings and rush.

along the streets as much the air of a great capital as London itself. Chicago, with her enormous size and the splendid warehouses that line her endless thoroughfares, now covered by a dense smoke pall,

Chicago—size, smoke.

leaves a strong though not wholly agreeable impression. Richmond has a quaint old-world look which dwells in the memory; few cities have a sea front equal in beauty to the lake front of Cleveland. Washington, with its wide and beautifully graded avenues,

Washington—streets,

and the glittering white of the stately Capitol, has become within the last twenty years a singularly handsome city.

Capitol.

Charleston has the air of an English town of last century, though lapped in a far richer vegetation, and with the shining softness of summer seas spread out before it. And New Orleans—or rather the Creole quarter of New Orleans, for the rest of the city is commonplace—is delicious, suggesting old France and Spain, yet a France and Spain strangely transmuted in this clime. I have seen nothing in America more picturesque than the Rue Royale,

New Orleans—old-world look.

with its houses of all heights, often built round a courtyard, where a magnolia or an orange tree stauds in the middle, and wooden external staircases lead up to wooden galleries, the house-fronts painted of all colors and carrying double rows of balconies decorated with pretty ironwork, the whole standing languid and still in the warm soft air, and touched with the subtle fragrance of decay.

Characteristic architecture,
Creole quarter—

Here in New Orleans the streets and public buildings, and specially the old City Hall, with the arms of Spain still upon it, speak of history. One feels, in stepping across Canal Street from the Creole quarter to the business part of the town, that one steps from an old nationality to a new one, that this city must have had vicissitudes, that it represents something,

historical feeling.

and that something one of the great. events of history, the surrender of the northern half of the New World by the Romano-Celtic races to the Teutonic. Quebec, and to a less degree Montreal, fifteen hundred miles away, tell the same tale; Santa Fé in New Mexico repeats it. . . .

Of the uniformity of political institutions over the whole United States I have spoken already.

III. Political uniformity:

Everywhere the same system of state governments, everywhere the same municipal governments, and almost uniformly bad or good in proportion to the greater or smaller population of the city; the same party machinery, organized on the same method, "run" by the same wirepullers and "workers."

same system of government—
In

rural local government there are some diversities in the names, areas, and functions of the different bodies, yet differences slight in comparison with the points of likeness. The schools are practically identical in organization, in the subjects taught, in the methods of teaching,

school system,

though the administration of them is as completely decentralized as can be imagined, even the state commissioner having no right to do more than suggest or report. So it is with the charitable institutions, with the libraries, the lecture courses, the public amusements. All these are more abundant and better of their kind in the richer and more cultivated parts of the country, generally in the North Atlantic than in the inland states, tes, and in the West than in the South.

libraries, etc.
But they

are the same in type everywhere. It is the same with the social habits and usages. There are still some differences between the South and the North; and in the Eastern cities the upper class is more Europeanized in its code of etiquette and in its ways of life. But even these variations tend to disappear.

(Even social usages tend to uniformity.)

Eastern customs begin to permeate the West, beginning with the richer families; the South is more like the North than it was before the war. Travel where you will, you feel that what you have found in one place that you will find in another. The thing which hath been will be: you can no more escape from it than you can quit the land to live in the sea.

Last of all we come to man himself—to man and to woman, not less important than man.

IV. Man—and woman.

The ideas of men and women, their fundamental beliefs and their superficial tastes, their methods of thinking and their fashions of talking, are what most concern their fellow-men; and if there be variety and freshness in these, the uniformity of nature and the monotony of cities signify but little. If I observe that in these respects also the similarity of type over the country is surprising, I shall be asked whether I am not making the old mistake of the man who fancied all Chinese were like one another, because noticing the dress and the pigtail, he did not notice minor differences of feature. A scholar is apt to think that all business men write the same hand, and a business man thinks the same of all scholars. Perhaps Americans think all Englishmen alike,

(Standard of judgment a shifting, personal one.)

and I may also be asked with whom I am comparing the Americans. With Europe as a whole? If so, is it not absurd to expect that the differences between different sections in one people should be as marked as those between different peoples? The United States are larger than Europe, but Europe has many races and many languages among whom contrasts far broader must be expected than between one people, even if it stretches over a continent.

It is most clearly not with Europe, but with each of the leading European peoples that we must compare the people of America. So comparing them with the peoples of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, one discovers more varieties between individuals in these European peoples than one finds in America, Scotchmen and Irishmen are more unlike Englishmen,

More variety in a single European country than in U. S.

the native of Normandy more unlike the native of Provence, the Pomeranian more unlike the Wurtemberger, the Piedmontese more unlike the Neapolitan, the Basque more unlike the Andalusian, than the American from any part of the country is to the American from any other. Differences of course there are between the human type as developed in different regions of the country—differences moral and intellectual as well as physical. You can generally tell a Southerner by his looks as well as by his speech, and the South, as a whole, has a character of its own, propagated from the older Atlantic to the newer Western states.

Differences of local types,

A native of Maine will probably differ from a native of Kentucky, a Georgian from an Oregonian. But these differences strike even an American observer much as the difference between a Yorkshire man and a Warwickshire man strikes the English, and is slighter than the contrast between a middle-class southern Englishman and a middle-class Scotchman, slighter than the difference between a peasant from Northumberland and a peasant from Dorsetshire.

yet not strongly marked.
Or,

to take another way of putting it: If at some great gathering of a political party from all parts of the United Kingdom you were to go round and talk to, say, one hundred, taken at random, of the persons present, you would be struck by more diversity between the notions and tastes and mental habits of the individuals comprising that one hundred than if you tried the same experiment with a hundred Americans of similar education and position, similarly gathered in a convention, from every state in the Union.

The notes that we have thus jotted down take shape in our note-book as follows:

The Uniformity of American Life

The drawback to the pleasantness of American life is its uniformity. Felt in

III. Aspects of Nature: natural features on a large scale—mountains, rivers. Vast plains of Mississippi Valley—flat, monotonous.

III. The Cities: right-angled streets, laundries, hotels.

[English cities much alike.

Italian cities much unlike.

American: English: English: Italian.]

Exceptions: Boston—Common, Beacon Hill, etc.

Exceptions: New York—great buildings and rush.

Exceptions: Chicago—size, smoke.

Exceptions: Washington—streets, Capitol.

Exceptions: New Orleans—old-world look. Characteristic architecture, Creole quarter—historical feeling.

III. Political uniformity: same system of government, school system, libraries, etc.

IIV. (Even social usages tend to uniformity.)

IIV. Man—and woman.

IIV. (Standard of judgment a shifting, personal one.)

IIV. More variety in a single European country than in U.S.

IIV. Differences of local types, yet not strongly marked.