Guidelines for Taking Notes

• Copy quotations carefully, with punctuation, capitalization, and spelling exactly as in the original.
• Enclose the quotation in quotation marks; don’t rely on your memory to distinguish your own words from those of the source.
• Use square brackets if you introduce words of your own into a quotation or make changes in it, and use ellipses if you omit material. If you later incorporate the quotation into your essay, copy it faithfully—brackets, ellipses, and all. (44b)
• Record the author’s name, the shortened title, and the page number(s) on which the quotation appears. If the note refers to more than one page, use a slash (/) within the quotation to indicate where one page ends and another begins. For sources without page numbers, record the paragraph or other section number(s), if any.
• Make sure you have a corresponding working-bibliography entry with complete source information. (17b)
• Label the note with a subject heading, and identify it as a quotation.