For more on synthesizing, see pp. 533–34, 697–98.
The summaries that you include in a working bibliography or that you make on a printed or digital copy of a source are useful reminders, but you should also make notes that analyze the text, that synthesize what you are learning with ideas you have gleaned elsewhere or with your own ideas, and that evaluate the quality of the source.
You will mine your notes for language to use in your draft, so be careful to
For more on annotating, see pp. 522–28; for more on avoiding plagiarism, see pp. 698–708.
You can take notes on a photocopy of a printed text or use comments or highlighting to annotate a digital text. Whenever possible, download, print, photocopy, or scan useful sources, so that you can read and make notes at your leisure and so that you can double-check your summaries, paraphrases, and quotations of sources against the original. These strategies, along with those discussed in Chapter 26, “Using Sources to Support Your Ideas,” will keep you from plagiarizing inadvertently.