A-manual-for-writers-of-research-papers-theses-and-dissertations

As we said, you probably won't be able to engage sources in these ways until after you'veread enough to form some views of your own. But if you keep these ways of thinking in mindas you begin to read, you'll engage your sources sooner and more productively.Of course, once you discover that you can productively agree or disagree with a source, youshould then ask So what? So what if you can show that while Smith claims that Easterners didnot embrace the story of the Alamo enthusiastically, in fact many did?4.2 Take Notes SystematicallyLike the other steps in a research project, note-taking goes better with a plan.4.2.1 Create Templates for NotesYou will take notes more reliably if you set up a system that encourages you to think beyondthe mere content of your sources by analyzing and organizing that content into usefulcategories. A few instructors still recommend taking notes in longhand on 3 × 5 cards, as infigure 4.1. A card like that may seem old-fashioned, but it provides a template for efficientnote-taking, even if you take notes on a laptop. (Start a new page for each general idea orclaim that you record from a source.) Here is a plan for such a template:At the top of each new page, create a space for bibliographic data (author, short title,page number).Create another space at the top for keywords (see upper right above). Those words willlater will let you sort and re-sort your notes by subject matter (for more on keywords, see4.3.4).Create different places on each new page for different kinds of notes. You might even