Outline mode in Word is a powerful tool for taking notes and outlining papers. In this class, I (Prof. Stephens-Martinez) will showcase how I organize my notes for the Cambridge Handbook and an old Word doc I used to outline a presentation.

Annotating

If you annotate documents, something to consider is effectively using color and any other way your program/file type lets you annotate. The following is how I annotate documents that I have evolved over many years. Feel free to use and interpolate what makes sense for you. Otherwise, take the opportunity to think about what would be a good annotation system for yourself.

Colors

Colors have specific meaning in my annotations and are loosely the following:

• Orange (if not available, red) – New term with the definition most likely nearby in the text
• Pink – Important point, likely originally made by the current paper
• Yellow – Semi-important point, maybe originating from the paper
• Green – Information I need to note, usually it is a fact or well-known piece of information that is not originating from the current paper
• Blue – Details of the paper’s experiment or methods; OR something of personal interest to me
• Purple – A citation that I want to follow up on

Annotation Type

Sometimes a file or program lets you go beyond just highlighting. This is generally how I use those features.

• Highlight – Something I want to easily find later
• Underline – There is a note nearby and it is referring to this text
• Note – A thought or comment on some underlined text

Supplemental Material

• If you want to learn more about outline mode, this Word outline mode tutorial is pretty reasonable.