Taking effective notes
Use these quick shapes and symbols to write and understand your notes quicker
Writing clear, easy to understand notes quickly will help you throughout your degree. Discover how to simplify your notes and save yourself time in lectures and when you research.
Lots of people spend time writing out full sentences and long phrases in lectures or during their research. It can be difficult to keep up with your lecturers when you do this, and you might miss key information. Meanwhile, some people note down key words and phrases and struggle to understand their notes later. Writing notes this way is known as note-taking.
Note-making on the other hand involves engaging with your subject material. While note-taking involves mimicking the information in front of you, note-making means processing and understanding the content as you write it down. This helps you remember the content. Try to think about what you're writing and summarise or paraphrase the content, or link it to your own ideas or other resources. See our tips on mind maps for an alternative to linear notes.
This page provides a number of common abbreviations to help you to save time and keep up in lectures.
Getting started
Common note-taking symbols
- & or + and, plus, with (the ampersand symbol can be difficult to draw freehand so many people use a squiggle to represent ‘and’)
- – minus, without
- = equals, is the same as, results in
- ≠ does not equal, is not the same as, does not result in
- ≈ is approximately equal to, is similar to
- < is less than, is smaller than
- > is greater than, is larger than
- ↑ increase, rise, growth
- ↑↑ rapid increase
- ↓ decrease, fall, shrinkage
- ↓↓ rapid decrease
- ⇒ or ∴ therefore, thus
- → leads on to, produces, causes
- x no, not, incorrect
- xx definitely not, disproved
- ? uncertain, possibly, unproven
- ✓ yes, correct
- ✓✓ definitely, certain, proven
- # number
- ✳ special, important, notable (when added to a word or phrase)
- / per – for example, £50/day instead of ‘fifty pounds per day’
Common general abbreviations
- c. approximately, roughly, about (abbreviation for the Latin ‘circa’)
- e.g. for example
- i.e. in other words (usually used when adding more detail or an explanation)
- cf. compared to, by comparison with
- w/ with
- w/o without
- v. very
- vv. extremely
- C century (e.g. C19 for ‘nineteenth century’)
- etc. and so on
- K or k a thousand (e.g. 500K for ‘five hundred thousand’)
- m a million (e.g. $6m for ‘six million dollars’)
- vs. against
Mind mapping
Mind maps can help you to organise your ideas, plan your assessments and communicate visually.
