What Are Cornell Notes? How to Use the Cornell Method, With an Example

Cornell notes are a way of laying out a notebook page so it doubles as a study tool. You draw a wide column on the right for notes during class, a narrow cue column on the left for questions you add afterward, and a strip across the bottom for a short summary. Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University, devised the method in the 1950s. To study, you cover the notes and answer the cue questions from memory.

This guide walks through the layout, each step and a filled-in example page. We make Ophaya smart pens, so a short section near the end covers using one, but paper and a ruler are all the method needs.

Where the Cornell method comes from

Pauk worked out the system in the 1950s as a teaching assistant at Cornell, according to a 2022 profile in Cornell's alumni magazine, and it spread through his 1962 book How to Study in College. Cornell's Learning Strategies Center still teaches the method and cites the book's 10th edition (2010, with Ross J. Q. Owens), where the system has its own chapter.

The Cornell notes layout

The note-taking column on the right takes most of the page, and it is the only part you write in during class. The cue column on the left stays empty until after class, when you fill it with questions or key words that point to the notes beside them. The summary area across the bottom holds a few sentences about the whole page.

Cornell's one-page handout gives measurements: a 2.5-inch cue column, a 6-inch note-taking column and a 2-inch summary area. The columns add up to 8.5 inches, the width of US letter paper. In a smaller notebook, keep the cue column a bit under a third of the width.

How to take Cornell notes, step by step

Before class: set up the page

Draw a vertical line 2.5 inches from the left edge and a horizontal line about 2 inches from the bottom, then write the course, date and topic at the top. Rule a week of pages at once so you are never doing it while the professor is talking.

During class: record

Write only in the note-taking column, in what Cornell's handout calls "telegraphic sentences": short phrases with the small words dropped, such as "Glycolysis: cytoplasm, net 2 ATP." Leave a blank line between ideas so cues can line up with them later. Pauk was direct about the left side: "As you're taking notes, keep the cue column empty." If you miss something, put a question mark in your notes and keep going.

After class: write questions, then the summary

As soon after class as you can, write questions in the cue column, each one next to the notes that answer it. "Why do cells need oxygen?" works better than the label "ETC" because it gives you something to answer later. Pauk wrote that writing questions "helps clarify meanings, reveal relationships, establish continuity, and strengthen memory."

Then write two or three sentences at the bottom, in your own words, on what the page was about. If you can't, you have found the part of the lecture you did not follow, while there is still time to ask.

Review: recite, reflect, review

To recite, cover the note-taking column with a sheet of paper, read each cue and answer it out loud in your own words, then uncover the notes and check. To reflect, ask how the material connects to last week's lecture and where you would use it. For review, Cornell's handout suggests at least ten minutes every week going over all your previous notes.

Study guides often call this sequence Pauk's five Rs: record, reduce, recite, reflect and review, as in this St. Louis Community College library guide. Cornell's handout calls the second step "questions" instead of "reduce." Either way, it means shrinking your notes into cues you can test yourself on.

A Cornell notes example: cellular respiration

Here is a finished page from a 50-minute intro biology lecture. The right column was written in class, and the cues and summary were added that evening.

The question mark in the last row is a gap to close before the next class. The textbook answers it: fermentation recycles NAD+, which lets glycolysis keep making ATP.

Common mistakes with Cornell notes

• Writing cues during the lecture. You listen less and write weaker questions, because you have not heard the whole argument yet.
• Filling the cue column with headings like "Glycolysis." A label tells you where something is. A question makes you pull it from memory.
• Skipping the summary because the page looks done.
• Rereading instead of reciting. A page can look familiar on a second read even when you could not explain it. Answering the cues with the notes covered shows what you can recall.

Cornell notes on paper, in an app or on an iPad

On paper, any notebook works once you rule the lines. In Word, Google Docs or OneNote, make a two-column table with a full-width summary row at the bottom. Typing is faster, which makes it tempting to transcribe the lecture. On an iPad, rule one Cornell page in your handwriting app, export it as a PDF and import it as a fresh page for each lecture. To recite, lay a sheet of paper over the right side of the screen.

Some lectures fit other formats better. A chemistry class full of reaction diagrams or a history unit built on dates may suit one of the other note taking methods, such as mapping or charting.

Doing Cornell notes with a smart pen

The Ophaya pen has an infrared camera that reads a printed dot pattern, so it captures handwriting only on Ophaya dot-code paper or the Ophaya LCD writing tablet. Ordinary paper gets the ink but no digital copy. This is how we would run a Cornell page with one:

1. Draw the cue and summary lines with the smart pen and a ruler on a dot-code page. The pen captures them like any other stroke, so the layout shows up in the free Ophaya Pro+ app.
2. If your instructor allows it, record in the app. The audio comes from your phone or tablet, not the pen, and it is linked to what you wrote, so a question mark in your notes becomes a spot you can replay that evening.
3. Write the summary in clear print. The app's OCR converts the page to editable text, and the summary is the part worth pasting into a study guide. Check the converted text before you rely on it.
4. Export the page as a PDF to review on your phone or send to a study partner.

The pen will not write your questions or your summary, and those are the steps that make Cornell notes work. For a full lecture routine, see using a smart pen for note taking and smart pens for college students. For OCR, read how to convert handwriting to text.

Frequently asked questions

Are Cornell notes effective?

The research is mixed, and most studies are small. In a 2023 quasi-experimental study of 128 nursing students in Morocco, the authors report that the 62 trained in the Cornell method produced better notes and scored better on a knowledge quiz than the 66 who were not. In a 2012 high school study, one class section used Cornell notes for about seven weeks while another took notes any way they liked, and unit test scores showed no significant difference. We think any benefit comes from the questions, summary and self-testing, not the lines on the page.

Can you do Cornell notes digitally?

Yes. A two-column table in a typing app, a ruled Cornell page in a tablet handwriting app, or a smart pen on dot-code paper all work.

What is the difference between Cornell notes and outline notes?

Outline notes organize a lecture into indented headings and subpoints. Cornell notes are a page layout plus a review routine, so you can write an outline inside the note-taking column and still add cues and a summary.

Do Cornell notes work for textbook reading?

Yes. Take reading notes in the right column, write a question for each idea in the cue column, and summarize each page at the bottom. Start with one chapter and see whether the cue questions help on the next quiz.