Slashdot Asks: Do You Prefer To Handwrite or Type Notes? (npr.org)

A study published by Psychological Science and transcribed on NPR explores the science behind note-taking. As technology becomes smaller, cheaper and more functional than ever before, it's not uncommon to see people taking notes on their laptop or tablet, especially in a school or work-related environment. In fact, it may be even more common to see people taking notes with an electronic device than with a pen and paper. The study shows that the process of taking notes by hand is slower, thus allowing the information being written to better soak into your brain. However, it's a double-edged sword. While using something like a laptop to type notes may be faster and allow for people to better transcribe what they're hearing, writing longhand generally allows people to better process the information they are writing, but at the expense of length. That is to say, writing longhand doesn't provide people with as much to look back on since the process is slower.

Now everyone is different and everyone has their own formula and routine that works for them, so we thought we'd ask the question: Do you prefer to handwrite notes or type notes on a computer? Does one form of note-taking work better than the other or is it a combination of the two that is best?

Comments

Depends on the content surely

[Harlequin80]

Good luck managing to type complex equations as fast as you can write them.

If you are talking about transcribing something, then yes typing is faster. But if your note taking requires you to jump around the page, annotate diagrams, sections of text or anything else then writing wins.

Having things electronic makes things easy to file and refer to, but that is why I use a tablet and stylus.

Re:Depends on the content surely

[damn_registrars]

You hit the nail on the head there. For history notes typing is great. For chemistry notes not so much. For math, forget it. Some digital handwriting systems are pretty good at note taking, but they all have their faults.

Personally I take my notes by hand first, then if I know I will want to go back to them later I manually transcribe them into presentation slides (which I usually then export to PDF).

Re:Depends on the content surely

[Harlequin80]

My note taking tends to be in meetings, while on the phone or at coffee shops. So my solution is to use OneNote. I write the notes with a stylus on my tablet and they then autosync with my laptop. I then attach them to the relevant record in my CRM.

Re:Depends on the content surely

[Harlequin80]

Forgive me for being dense but how would a camera help? Some of the maths lectures I have done have had the solution for the same problem spread over 9 hours of lectures. You wouldn't know when to take a photo, let alone be able to understand it afterwards.

Why ask a poll type question without a actual poll

[Anonymous Coward]

Why ask a poll type question without having a actual poll? OP are you going to manually go through every comment to tally it or is there really no reason in asking the question and just a attempt in making "news" regarding something IMO that isn't nerd news worthy..

Handwriting for security

[the_other_one]

My cursive writing is so unreadable it is better than encryption.

It's the way you take notes, not the tech

[AthanasiusKircher]

Numerous studies have shown better retention and understanding when people "take notes," as opposed to simply transcribing large chunks of what they hear.

This is a general issue with learning in general -- the more your brain "works" to understand something, the better you retain it. (Numerous studies suggest that too.) And even if you're not going for retention in your brain, if you actually listen and comprehend, then write down short "notes" (i.e., summaries), you'll probably do better than if you attempt to transcribe spottily and perhaps miss some critical detail in your transcription.

The problem is that many people type so fast that they naturally tend toward chunks of transcription, rather than processing the information and then summarizing in "notes." If you take the same kind of notes while typing that good note-takers do by hand, you'd do just as well... perhaps better, because sometimes the speed will help.

But of course there are other advantages to handwriting, especially when it comes to math, chemical formulas, drawing diagrams, flow-charts, whatever. Handwriting is still usually much faster for everything other than plain text -- and thus, it's still my preferred medium, whether on paper or with a stylus on a tablet or whatever. (Also, I don't believe in linear note-taking: connections are generally complex between ideas, and a blank sheet of paper allows a lot more flexibility in drawing various sorts of connections than text arranged in lines.)

Re:It's the way you take notes, not the tech

[j2.718ff]

Numerous studies have shown better retention and understanding when people "take notes," as opposed to simply transcribing large chunks of what they hear.

When I started college, I thought I must be super-fast at note-taking, because other students would complain when the professor erased something from the board, saying they weren't done taking notes yet. I later realized, I didn't write any faster than the other students - the difference is, I wrote what I thought was worth writing, and never just copied things down.

As such, my notes contained the information I thought was worth keeping. They were tailored to me, and might lack details other students thought important. But I also retained most of what I wrote, only having to look back for specific formulae, but rarely for overall concepts.

Computer to transcribe, paper to think

[jheath314]

Over the years I have gotten better at taking notes on a computer, to the point where I can make well-organized, nicely formatted notes in real time. I memorized a few shortcuts like Ctrl-Alt-1, 2, or 3 for various headings and subheadings, wrote a few macros to insert code blocks, etc. Since my typing speed is much faster than my handwriting, and the flexibility of being able to go back and edit or rearrange things, the computer is now my preferred method for taking notes during a lecture.

However, the minute I need to think creatively (whether to organize my thoughts, troubleshoot a problem, or create an outline for a new document), I immediately go back to pen and paper. I'm not entirely sure why... one would think that the ease of cutting and pasting on a computer would make it better suited for keeping up with fluid nature of creative thought, but no. Something about the tactile nature of the page makes it easier to think clearly, scribbles and all. I suspect it has to do with thinking habits ingrained from early childhood... or I might just be a Luddite at heart.

Paper & Pen for Flexibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a paper-based note-taking system that has served me well for my entire career.

I always write down the date and time I arrive, and the time leave for the day, with a margin-to-margin line delineating days.

Whenever I change tasks, I jot down the time and what I'm doing next. Huge help when I'm working on projects where to-the-minute timecards are required.

In meetings, I write down the key points being made. If the point applies directly to me, I put a box in the left column, to indicate that it is a "to-do" item.

If a point is something I can/should contribute to, but not during this meeting, I put a circle to indicate I should probably send an email.

If there is a change in policy, or a new direction or project, I put an asterisk to the left.

Most of the above merely help me prioritize my work.

But there is one more massive reason to take notes compulsively, and not just in meetings: Patents. While I have no patents to my name, my notes have twice been used as "prior art" to help defeat or limit other patents, or to help negotiate far better licensing terms.

From a personal development perspective, I also make not of my mistakes. Writing them down makes it harder to repeat them.

As I get older and my memory grows ever weaker, I find it hugely beneficial to be able to go back 6 months or a year, and be able to perfectly describe what I was doing and why.

Paper rocks. Plus it's way easier to carry around, and needs "recharging" only about twice a year.

Neither

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Neither. I engage in the meeting, it's a conversation not a data-dump. I do use the notes feature in my phone to take down the bullet points of the conversation. When I get back to my desk I then type everything out using those bullet points as a guide.

One of the things that drives me crazy when I give marching orders to my employees is when they insist on writing every step down. I don't mind a little note-taking, but the ones that try to write the whole conversations down are typically the ones that I end up having to give the most revisions to. When they discuss with me they form the correct picture in their head, then they perform like a brain instead of like a robot. When questions come up they can take a better guess at what the answer probably is if I'm not immediately around to answer.

Re:Neither

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

No, no, and no.

Law Student v. Lawyer

[speedplane]

When I was a student in Law School, I almost exclusively took notes on a computer. When I graduated and starting practicing, I switched to legalpads (i.e., a large notepad). The primary reason I switched is because as a lawyer, you can have a legalpad sitting on a conference room desk in a meeting filled with people and it wont be a distraction to yourself or others. In law school, you mostly sat, listened and took notes, so it was less of an issue.

Re: I am dictating this

[Anonymous Coward]

People using phones to speak messages to other people? I've never heard of such lunacy....

Re:write. on paper

[AJWM]

This.

For one, I can put stuff on paper with a pen that is slower, or even almost impossible, with a keyboard or even stylus. Circles and arrows, diagrams, lines linking one chunk of text to another, double-underlining, triple-underling, etc, etc.

Of course that means I'm also thinking about what I'm putting down on the page, not just playing stenographer, so I rarely have to go back and look through those notes: it's passed through audio memory, visual memory, muscle memory and analytic memory already. (For key facts I may go back and look). Moreover, skimming the notes months or years later tends to put you back in the environment when/where you wrote them if they're handwritten. Much less so for something typed.

Mind, it's the opposite when I'm writing (fiction or code) -- that's mostly brain to keyboard with only a little outlining by hand. But then I'll do mark-up edits on paper if it's more than a few lines.

Missing Option - Stenographer

[germansausage]

This took place in the olden days, before there were laptops. For our basic circuits class (the one that separated the EEs from the wannabes) a group of us hired a stenographer to take notes. We talked the prof into giving permission, on the sensible basis that if we weren't copying notes just as fast we could to keep up, then we could actually pay attention to the lecture. I think he got a copy of the notes as well. Cost us all about a dollar a lecture and the stenographer made about $40 an hour, which was a pile of money in those days.

Neither. I listen.

[BarbaraHudson]

If there's something I don't understand, I'll realize I don't understand it instead of being busy making notes. I'll ask the questions nobody else is asking because they're too busy scribbling notes to actually engage in the learning process.

Re:type

[mwvdlee]

...unless your note includes drawings.

As always; it depends. Not all note taking is equal.

Sometimes I write, sometimes I type and sometimes, when I need to take a verbatim copy, I photograph.
I'm assuming most people do likewise.