How to Take Notes: 5 Methods Compared, and How to Study From Them

The best way to take notes is to write the key ideas in your own words, in a structure that fits the content, and then turn those notes into questions you can test yourself on later. Notes aren't a record of the lecture; they're raw material for revision, so a method like Cornell, outline, mapping or charting is only as good as what you do with it afterwards.

This guide compares five note-taking methods with examples, looks at what the research actually says about handwriting versus typing, and shows you how to turn any set of notes into active recall.

Why do notes matter at all?

Taking notes does two jobs.

1. Encoding. Deciding what to write forces you to pay attention, pick out what matters and put it in your own words. That processing helps you learn, even if you never look at the notes again.
2. Storage. Notes are something to revise from later, when your memory of the lecture has faded.

Most students only think about the second job, which leads to trying to write everything down. The first job argues the opposite: write less, but think more about what you write.

The 5 note-taking methods compared

1. The Cornell method

The Cornell method was developed by Walter Pauk at Cornell University and described in his book How to Study in College. It's popular because it builds revision into the page itself.

Setup: draw a line about a third of the way across the page from the left, and another line across the bottom, leaving a strip a few lines tall.

How to use it:

1. During class: take notes in the right column. Keep them short.
2. Within a day: read through and write questions in the left column that the notes answer. "What are the three stages of mitosis?" next to the section on mitosis.
3. Summarise: write 2 to 3 sentences at the bottom covering the whole page.
4. Revise: cover the right column and answer the questions on the left from memory.

That last step is the real advantage. A Cornell page is already a set of practice questions.

2. The outline method

Outlines use headings and indented dot points to show how ideas fit together.

The French Revolution: causes

1. Financial crisis
   • Debt from wars, including support for the American Revolution
   • Unfair tax system: clergy and nobles largely exempt
2. Social tension
   • Three estates; Third Estate the large majority, with little power
3. Enlightenment ideas
   • Challenged the divine right of kings

Best for: lectures and textbooks that already follow a clear structure. Outlines are fast to write, easy to read and work well typed.

Watch out for: speakers who jump between ideas. If you can't tell where a point fits, write it anyway and sort it out later.

3. The mapping method

Mind maps put the main idea in the centre and branch out to related ideas, with sub-branches for details.

Best for: topics where connections matter more than order, like themes across a novel, causes and effects in geography or the links between body systems. Maps are also excellent for planning essays.

How to make one well:

1. Put the topic in the middle.
2. Add 3 to 6 main branches, each a key subtopic.
3. Add details as smaller branches, using single words or short phrases.
4. Draw cross links between branches that connect. These are often the insights examiners reward.

Watch out for: maps that become art projects. Colour and drawings help memory a little, but not if they take an hour.

4. The charting method

Charts use a table to compare several things across the same categories.

Best for: anything you'd be asked to compare: types of government, characters in a play, economic systems, historical events, chemical reactions. Charts make gaps very obvious, because an empty cell stands out.

Watch out for: live lectures where you don't know the categories yet. Charting often works best as a second pass, turning outline notes into a table afterwards.

5. The sentence method

Write each new idea as a short sentence on its own line, often numbered.

1. Photosynthesis happens in chloroplasts.
2. Light-dependent reactions happen on the thylakoid membranes.
3. They produce ATP and NADPH and release oxygen.
4. The Calvin cycle happens in the stroma and uses ATP and NADPH to make glucose.

Best for: fast, information-dense lectures where you don't have time to organise. It's simple and it keeps up.

Watch out for: a pile of sentences with no structure. Reorganise them into an outline or chart within a day.

Which method should you use?

You don't have to pick one forever. Many students use Cornell as a default and switch to a chart or a map for particular topics.

Is it better to handwrite notes or type them?

What the 2014 study found

Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014), published in Psychological Science, compared students taking notes on laptops with students taking notes by hand while watching recorded talks. Laptop users wrote more words and more verbatim notes, copying what they heard word for word. On later questions, the laptop group did worse on conceptual questions that required understanding, not just remembering facts.

The proposed explanation was that typing is fast enough to transcribe without thinking, while handwriting is slow enough to force you to summarise and process. The paper was widely shared under the idea that "the pen is mightier than the keyboard".

What happened next

Later replication attempts found mixed results. A replication and extension by Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson (2019), published in Educational Psychology Review, did not find the same clear advantage for handwriting. Other studies have also found smaller or inconsistent differences.

So the honest summary is: the tool probably matters less than how you use it. The likely real issue is verbatim transcription, which you can fall into with either a pen or a keyboard.

Practical pros and cons

If you type, deliberately write in your own words, not the lecturer's, and keep everything else closed. If you handwrite, leave space to add things later. A tablet with a stylus sits somewhere between the two.

How do you take notes in a lecture?

Before: skim the slides or reading if they're available. Knowing the structure in advance means you can write less and listen more.

During:

• Write headings, key terms, definitions and examples.
• Note anything the lecturer repeats, writes on the board or says "this will be on the exam".
• Use abbreviations: "b/c" for because, "→" for leads to, "∴" for therefore.
• Mark confusing points with a "?" to check later.
• Don't copy slides word for word. If the slides will be posted, write what the slides don't say.

After (within 24 hours): fill gaps, answer your "?" marks, and do the review step of your method, such as writing Cornell cues or turning sentences into an outline. This review is short, but it's the single most valuable part. If you're in your first year at uni, our first year uni study tips cover how to keep up with lectures week by week.

How do you turn notes into active recall?

Notes only help in the exam if you can produce what's in them from memory. Rereading them over and over feels productive but mostly builds familiarity. Testing yourself on them is what builds recall, which is explained in full in our guide to active recall.

Here are four ways to convert notes into practice:

1. Cover and answer. With Cornell notes, cover the right column and answer the cue questions. With any other format, write questions in the margin first.
2. Make flashcards. Every definition, key fact or formula becomes a card with a question on the front.
3. Blurt. Read a page once, close it, and write down everything you remember on blank paper. Compare and mark gaps in a different colour.
4. Explain. Pick a section and explain it out loud without looking, as in the Feynman technique. Wherever you stall is what to review.

Psychologists call the benefit of producing information yourself, rather than reading it, the generation effect (Slamecka and Graf, 1978, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory). Writing your own questions and answering them puts that to work.

A note-to-recall routine

What are the most common note-taking mistakes?

Writing everything. If your notes are a transcript, you didn't process anything. Aim for the key ideas, in your words.

Spending ages making notes pretty. Colour coding, perfect handwriting and decorated headings can eat hours. A little visual structure helps; beyond that it's procrastination with stationery.

Copying slides. If the slides are shared, you have them already. Write what the lecturer adds.

Never reviewing. Notes that sit untouched until the week before the exam are much less useful than notes reviewed within a day.

Rewriting as revision. Copying notes out neatly is mostly passive. Transform them instead: condense from memory, turn them into questions or reorganise them into a chart.

Reading notes as your only revision. Reading is the start, not the method. Test yourself.

How to use StudyDork alongside your notes

StudyDork is a study app, not a notes app, so keep your notes wherever you like: paper, a tablet or a document. Where it helps is the time you spend reviewing and testing yourself on them.

• A focus block for review. The 10 to 15 minute "after class" review is easy to skip. A free StudyDork Pomodoro session runs 20 minute focus blocks with 5 minute breaks, so one block covers the review with time to spare.
• No phone during note-taking or review. If you type notes, distractions are close by. Any StudyDork session can block the apps you choose until it ends.
• Track each unit. Subjects are free and unlimited, so you can log time against each class or unit and see which ones are getting reviewed. StudyDork Pro adds Subject Stats with the full breakdown. If you're at uni, the StudyDork for uni page shows how students set it up for a semester.

Notes are the start, not the finish

Good notes are short, in your own words and built to be tested on. The method matters less than the habit: write the key ideas, review within a day, then turn them into questions you answer from memory.

Try one thing this week. Next lecture, use the Cornell layout. That evening, spend ten minutes writing questions in the cue column. In three days, cover the notes and answer them. You'll know straight away which parts of the lecture actually went in.