The length and detail of your paper will determine how many piles and cards you have. You can have any number of piles and any number of cards in each pile. When you finish, you should have your cards in piles, one topic per pile. all the cards titled: ' Hughes' Poetry' should be together). Group together all the cards that have the same topic (i.e. Once you have written the information down on the note cards, you only need to go back and organize your cards by topic.

(For information on citing your sources, look at English Works! handouts on MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian Style citations). Be sure you know which form of citation your teacher requires.

It is important to be accurate with the page numbers on your note cards, as you will need them for citations throughout your research paper.

the image of a notecard with a mark on page. You will also have less work to do when you are actually writing the paper. If you are consistent in paraphrasing at this stage, then you will be certain not to accidentally plagiarize someone else's work.

It is helpful to paraphrase, or summarize, your research on the index cards while you are taking notes. Item number three is the paraphrased information that you found.You will need to add the publication information and use the correct citation format (APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, etc.) for the formal works cited page. Remember! This is not a complete works cited, bibliography, or reference page. Number your sources on this list, and then use the numbers on the note cards to specify which source provided which fact. You could write out the title on each card, or simply list your sources on a separate sheet of paper, like the example here. In the previous example, the source was given a number, instead of writing out the entire title. The source title is the name of the book, magazine, website, etc., in which you found the information.

It is necessary to have these topics once you begin organizing your research.You will be less likely to write down unnecessary information (facts that are not related to your topic) if you are careful to write down the topic for every card. It keeps you focused in your research.For example, if you are writing a paper on the life and works of the poet, Langston Hughes, you may have cards with topics such as:Īlthough it may seem tedious to give each note card a topic name, it serves two purposes: After writing down the information, figure out how you could briefly categorize, or title it. Think of it as the title, or main idea of the card. The card topic is a name that you make up yourself. The card topic is the title for the kind of information on the card.In order to keep your ideas in order, and to remember where you found the ideas, there are four items that you should include on the index card, as you will see below. Each sentence or idea that you find should be paraphrased (summarized in your own words), and written on a card. ResearchingĪs you find interesting facts about your topic during your research, you should write them down. Later, as you write your paper, each card topic becomes a body paragraph (supporting idea) in your paper. For each topic, you could have any number of cards from several different sources. With this method, you categorize the information you find by topic. To make it easy on yourself, you can use an index card system as you gather information. If you are not organized, it will take considerably more time to write the paper. When you are faced with starting a research paper, the most important part of researching and beginning to write is ORGANIZING the information and your thoughts. Strategies for Taking Cloze Reading Tests.

Size of a notecard