Research should generally be from books or articles. If you don’t know what articles or books might be appropriate or useful, then you could start with Wikipedia articles or other encyclopedic sources, and look at their reference lists for ideas about further reading. These sources are fine as a beginning.

If you find someone whose writing is particularly interesting and appropriate, it is often very useful to see if you can find out what authors they admired and read. You can do this by noting who they refer to, in the text of their writings or in the reference list. You can meander productively through wide bodies of learning in this manner.

Assume you need 5-10 books or articles per thousand words of essay, unless you have been instructed otherwise.

While you are reading, see if you can notice anything that catches your attention. This might be something you think is important, or something that you seriously disagree with, or something that you might want to know more about. You have to pay careful attention to your emotional reactions to do this. This can help guide you which parts of a reading you should take notes on.

When taking notes, you should eliminate the extra detail and concentrate on communicating what is important. Try to take notes after you have read something, with the book closed, so that you are not tempted to copy the author’s writing word for word.

If you find note-taking in this manner difficult, try this. Read a paragraph. Look away. Then say to yourself, out loud, even in a whisper (if you are in a library), what the paragraph meant. Listen to what you said, and then quickly write it down.

Take about two to three times as many notes, by word, as you will need for your essay. You might think that is inefficient, but it’s not. In order to write intelligibly about something, or to speak intelligently about it, you need to know far more than you actually communicate.

Once you have your compiled your research, use your notes you to create your outline topics.

Essay’s Notes feature allows you to:

You can find the Notes page on your Essay Home using the left navigation bar.

Your notes are listed on the Notes page. Each note on the Notes page will be displayed on a Note card.

Clicking on a Note card will open up the Note panel.

When working on an essay in your Essay workspace, you can access notes linked to that essay using the Notes toolbar on the right of your screen.

You can click the “View all notes” icon at the top of the Notes Toolbar to open up the Notes page in Essay Home and view all your notes.

You can create a note from the Notes page on Essay Home, or within your Essay workspace using the Notes toolbar.

To create a new note from the Notes page, click the “New note” button at the top right of the page.

To create a quick note in your Essay workspace, go to the Notes toolbar on the right and click the “Make a note” button. When you create a note using the Notes toolbar, the note will be automatically linked to the open essay. More on linking notes later.

If you want to write a longer note, or just want more space to work with, you can open the Note panel by clicking the “Open Note panel” icon. Writing your note in the Note panel allows you to perform more note level actions like adding tags, or linking your note to essays. More on that later.

Clicking on an existing note opens the Note panel. Clicking the collapse icon at the top left of the note closes it.

You can delete a note in a few ways: from the Note card on the Notes page, from the Note panel, or from the Notes toolbar in your Essay workspace.

Deleting a note via the Note card

While viewing your notes on the Notes page, click the context menu of your Note card and select “Delete.”

While working on a note in the Note panel, click on the context menu at the top right of the Note panel, and select “Delete.”

Open the Notes toolbar in your Essay workspace and navigate to the note you wish to delete. Click on the context menu of the note at the top right, and select “Delete.”

When you delete a note, it is deleted permanently - you cannot recover a deleted note.

You can link a note (or multiple notes) to an essay. Linking a note to an essay allows you to view the note from the Notes toolbar while you are working on that essay.

To link a note to an essay, click on the Note card to open up the Note panel. Then click on the “Essay link” icon at the top right of the Note panel. Lastly, select the essay you wish to link the note to. You can type in the title of the essay to search for it.

You can navigate to an essay from the Notes page by clicking on the “essay link” - you will be taken to the essay with the note open.

If you create a note from within an essay using the Notes toolbar, the note is automatically linked to that essay.

You can unlink a note from an essay by clicking on the note’s context menu, and selecting “Unlink from essay.”

You can create a note that is linked to text within your essay. For example, you can create a note that is linked to an outline topic, a heading, a paragraph, or an individual sentence.

When you link a note to text within your essay, a “Notes badge” will appear next to it in the tool panel.

To add a note that is linked to an outline topic, select the outline topic, and click the “Add a note” icon at the top right of the Outline toolbar. This is a great way to start organizing your research into your outline.

To add a note that is linked to a paragraph, select the paragraph (in Outline or Reorder paragraph view) and click the “Add a note” icon at the top of the toolbar.

To add a note that is linked to a specific sentence, select a sentence in Rewrite or Reorder sentence view and click the “Add a note” icon at the top of the toolbar.

When you create a note for a sentence in Rewrite, the note will apply to that same sentence in Reorder, and vice versa.

If you delete a sentence that has a linked note, the note will not be deleted, it will remain linked to the essay.

If you have a note that is linked to something within your essay (i.e. outline topic, paragraph, sentence, etc.), you can easily navigate from the Notes toolbar to the linked section in your essay, and vice versa.

If you are viewing a linked note in your Notes toolbar, you can navigate to the linked section by clicking the “link” in your note.

You can also quickly open up a note from the Essay workspace by clicking on the Notes badge in the Tool panel. For example, let’s say you are working in Rewrite. If you want to open a note associated with a rewritten sentence, click the Notes badge in the Rewrite panel.

Another important feature of Notes is Save for later. Save for later allows you to remove a section of your essay and save it as a note.

We recommend that you write more than you need, which inevitably leads to the necessity to cut and cull. You only want to keep what is absolutely necessary to communicate and support your argument. Most writers are familiar with the phrase “kill your darlings.” If an idea doesn’t fit, you should remove it, no matter how fond of it you may be. Save for later allows you to remove anything that doesn’t fit without worrying about losing important ideas forever.

Let’s say you’ve written a paragraph, but it’s not quite fitting with the rest of your essay. Maybe you need to add to it, maybe you need to shorten it. Maybe it’s just in the wrong place, but the right place isn’t obvious right now. It’s got potential though, so you don’t just want to delete it and lose it. Save for later allows you to remove the paragraph from your essay so it’s no longer a distraction, and saves it as a note in your essay so you can come back to it when you’re ready. You can even link the note it to another essay if you want to explore the idea in another project.

You can save any part of your writing for later by highlighting the text in the main editor, and clicking the “Save for later” icon that appears in the editor toolbar.

While in Outline, you can save an entire Outline section for later. To save an Outline section for later, select the Outline Topic, and click the “Save for later” icon at the top of the Outline toolbar.

Before saving the Outline section as a note, you will get a warning — please be aware that any rewrites for sentences in the Outline section will be lost.

Please note, if the Outline Topic is saved for later from the Outline tool, the entire topic and it’s content are removed from the essay and added to the note.

If the Outline Topic is saved for later in the Reorder tool, just the Outline Topic is removed and added to the note, the other text blocks remain in the essay.

If you are in Outline or Reorder (paragraph view), you can select a paragraph and click the “Save for later” icon. This will remove the paragraph(s) from your essay and save it as a note.

Again, before saving the paragraph as a note, you will get a warning — please be aware that any rewrites for sentences in the paragraph will be lost.

If you are in Rewrite or Reorder (sentence view), you can select the sentence you wish to save for later and click the “Save for later” icon in the toolbar at the top.

Once again, before saving the sentence as a note, you will get a warning — please be aware that any rewrites for that sentence will be lost.

Please note that if you save a sentence or paragraph for later that had a note linked to it, the note will be unlinked from that sentence or paragraph since it is being removed from the essay. The note will remain linked to the essay.

You can filter your Notes page to view notes by essay link, by tag, or by note type. Note type refers to whether the note is “Saved for later” or is linked to a sentence, paragraph, heading or outline topic.

While on the Notes page, click the “Essay,” “Tag” or “Type” drop-down menu to filter your notes by essay, by tag, or by type. You can clear the filter by clicking the “Clear filters” button.

You can also filter your notes by tag and type while working on an essay using the Notes toolbar. While viewing the Notes toolbar, click the filter icon.

You can search for a note by title in the Notes page or in your Essay workspace via the Notes toolbar.

To search for a note while on the Notes page, click the “search” icon at the top right of the Notes page, and enter the note's title.

To search for a note while in the Notes toolbar, click on the “search” icon at the top right of the Notes toolbar, and enter the note's title.

You can “Pin” a note both within an essay and on the Notes page.

To pin a note, click on the “Pin” icon at the top right of your Note card, or the top right of the Note panel.

When you pin a note it will create a “Pinned” section at the top of your Notes page. All your pinned notes will appear at the top of the Notes page.

If you pin a note that is linked to an essay, it will appear pinned in both the Notes page, and the Notes toolbar within that essay.

You can also pin a note in the Notes toolbar in your Essay workspace. Again, click on the “Pin” icon at the top right of the Note card.

When you pin a note in the Notes toolbar, it appears at the top of the Notes toolbar for that essay.

To unpin a note, simply click on the note’s “Pin” icon again.

You can create and assign tags to your notes. Use the same tags for multiple notes, and add as many tags to your note as you wish. You can customize the color of the tags, and delete a tag if you no longer need it.

To create a tag, open up a note in the Note panel, either from the Notes page or the Notes toolbar in your Essay workspace, and click the “Tag” icon at the top right of the Note panel. To create a tag, type the name of the tag into the space provided and click “Create” or press enter.

You can also create a tag directly on a Note card on the Notes page by clicking the “+ Add tag” button, typing the name of the tag into the space provided, and clicking “Create” or pressing enter.

Once you have existing tags, you can easily assign your note a tag by clicking the “tag” icon at the top right of the Note panel, and assigning your note a tag (or multiple tags).

You can also assign your note a tag by clicking the “+ Add tag” button on the Note card.

You can customize the color and text of a tag by clicking on the tag, and selecting the tag’s context menu. Then, select the new color for your tag, or type out the new name for your tag in the space provided.

You can also customize your tag while in the Notes panel. Open a note in the Notes panel, click the “tag”, and then click the tag’s context menu.

You can delete a tag from the Notes page or Notes toolbar in the Essay workspace by navigating to the tag’s context menu, and clicking “delete tag.”