/lit/ - Literature

Word. Of. The. Day.

word: ardor
definition: a strong emotion, often devotion, enthusiasm, or desire
e.g. They had lost their ardor for each other over the years, so the marriage was soon to end.

>>18371672
This is my note-taking method, it may help: I keep a notebook next to me when I read, and pause after each sentence to reflect whether I've understood it, then pause again after each paragraph. I'll reread frequently, when I don't find on reflection I've understood it. I usually take a note on the notepad, briefly summarizing what I've understood, for each paragraph. Sometimes a note will cover multiple paragraphs, sometimes multiple notes per paragraph, it depends on how dense the text is; basically I take a note for each crucial point covered in the text. If the text's editors give no other guidelines for references, I'll number each note with a [page].[paragraph] notation. When I'm done a section of text, I'll go back over my notes, and I'll review the text for any note I read that doesn't make sense to me, appending the note if needed. Then I'll try to organize the (roughly) paragraph summaries on my notepad into groups, describing the major divisions of the argument in the text, and make marginal notes on my notepad grouping together multiple lines of my notes as a division of this sort, and making a brief marginal note summarizing what goes on in this division. If the text is sufficiently long or complex, or I'm working with it a lot, I'll start a second version of my notes, where instead of (roughly) paragraph summaries on each line, I write a summary of these divisions of the argument, and then in the margins of this set of notes I'll organize these divisions into groups (super-divisions, if you like) in the same way. Ideally, I'd like to be able to give a statement of the text in (roughly) one sentence, to be able to expand that out to a statement of the major divisions of the text in (roughly) a quarter page (for an article) or half page (for a book) or full page (for a long book), to be able to expand that out to the (roughly) paragraph summaries I take while reading, and expand that out to the actual text. If I find that the overall argumentative structure of the text does not match its written structure, I'll make an additional version of notes which depicts its argumentative structure. Often this will involve diagrams rather than just written notes, and I'll label the diagrams with page/paragraph references based on the notes I take while I'm reading. And if I'm working closely with a particular section of the text, I'll make another version of notes, which tries to model the argumentative structure of the section I'm working with in a more formal premise/conclusion way. Here there may be several notes per paragraph if the text is particularly dense.