Effective Note Taking:
Do not record material unrelated to your topic.
Make sure that summaries and paraphrases accurately express the ideas in your sources.
Be accurate.
Make sure to copy direct quotations word for word, with capitalization, spelling and punctuation precisely as in the original.
Make sure that every direct quotation begins and ends with quotation marks.
Double check statistics and facts for accuracy.
Distinguish between fact and opinion by labeling opinions as such:
o Dr. Graves thinks that…
o According to Grace Jackson…
Quote only the important parts of a passage.
Indicate words left out by using points of ellipsis (…)- a series of three spaced dots enclosed in brackets.
Use only the three dots when cutting material within a sentence.
Use a period before the dots when cutting a full sentence, a paragraph, or more than a paragraph. Use a period after the dots when you cut material from the end of a sentence.
Use brackets ([ ]) to enclose any explanatory information that you add within a quotation.
When to Quote, Paraphrase, and Summarize:
Direct quotation: Use a direct quotation when an idea is especially well-stated in a source-that is, when a passage is very clear, beautiful, funny, or powerful. Use direct quotation when the wording is historically or legally significant or when reproducing a definition.
Paraphrase: Use paraphrase as your basic note form. Paraphrase unless you have a good reason to quote or summarize your source.
Summarize: Summarize when a passage is too long to be quoted or paraphrased.
Quotation plus summary or paraphrase: Use this kind of note when you want to quote a source but need to give more explanation to make the quote.
EXAMPLES OF PARAPHRASING
Original Text (From a definition of color blindness)
visual defect resulting in the inability to distinguish colors. About 8% of men and 0.5% of women experience some difficulty in color perception. Color blindness is usually an inherited sex-linked characteristic, transmitted through, but recessive in, females. Acquired color blindness results from certain degenerative diseases of the eyes. Most of those with defective color vision are only partially color-blind to red and green, i.e., they have a limited ability to distinguish reddish and greenish shades. Those who are completely color-blind to red and green see both colors as a shade of yellow. Completely color-blind individuals can recognize only black, white, and shades of gray. (Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.)
Paraphrase : Color blindness, affecting approximately 8% of men and .5% of women, is a condition characterized by difficulty in telling one color from another, most often hereditary but in some cases caused by disease. The majority of color-blind people cannot distinguish some shades of red and green, but those who cannot perceive those colors at all see red and green objects as yellow. There are people who cannot see color at all and perceive all objects in a range of black through gray to white. (Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.)
Summary : Color blindness, usually a sex-linked hereditary condition found more often in men than women and sometimes the result of eye disease, involves limited ability to tell red from green, and sometimes complete inability to see red and green. In a much rarer form of color blindness, the individual sees no colors at all.
Quotation, Integrated : Color blindness is a “visual defect resulting in the inability to distinguish colors” (Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.). Most often it is a hereditary condition that involves only some shades of red and green, but people with complete red-green color blindness see yellow instead, and some people have no color perception at all. (Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.).
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