If your purpose in noting from your text is to gather information for an assignment or a presentation, it is important that the notes you make reflect the structure of the text you will produce rather than the one you are noting from. That is, as you take notes, start to fit them into the likely structure of your assignment. (See the sections on planning in the Essaywriting workshop).
Use the headings or questions from the plan of your assignment to focus and structure your notes, being very clear exactly what it is you need to find out. What section(s) of your text contains information that is relevant to the various sections of your assignment?
You may find it helps to allocate a separate page to each heading or question from your assignment plan. Note information on each page that is relevant to its heading, making sure that you identify the author, date & page number for each note. (Record full bibliographic details elsewhere in a reference list.)
Take care to distinguish between your summary or rewording of the ideas from your text and passages that you quote directly. Using quotation marks for exact quotes may help make this distinction clear.
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