How to Take Notes From a Textbook (With a Worked Example)

Learning how to take notes from a textbook starts before you read a word. Spend about ten minutes on the headings and the end-of-chapter questions, and turn the headings into questions. Then read one section at a time with your pen down. When you reach the end of a section, look away from the book and write the main points in your own words, with the page number beside each one. Copy only definitions and formulas word for word. Once the chapter is done, turn your notes into questions and answer them from memory, more than once, before the test.

The steps are the same in any subject, and they work with rented books and e-textbooks you can't write in. We make Ophaya smart pens, but a notebook and any pen will do.

Before you read: preview the chapter and write questions

Look at everything in the chapter except the body text. SQ3R (survey, question, read, recite, review), a reading method taught in a University of Manitoba study handout, starts with that survey: headings, figures and tables, words in bold, the summary, and how many pages you're facing.

Each heading can become a question: "Passive transport" turns into "What crosses a membrane without the cell spending energy?" Write a few of these at the top of a fresh page, under the course, chapter and page range. Read the end-of-chapter questions now as well, since they show what the authors expect you to take away. If your instructor assigned only sections 5.1 to 5.3, write that down, so you don't spend an hour on a sidebar that won't be tested.

How to take notes from a textbook, one section at a time

Read with the pen down. The UNC Learning Center's guide to taking notes while reading suggests short stretches ("likely a paragraph or two or up to a page") and waiting until the end of a page to write, so you summarize instead of copying. We'd use the smallest heading in the book as the unit: read everything under it, the figure included, and then stop.

Now look away and write what the section said, a line or two per main idea, in short phrases of your own. If you can't do it without peeking, you haven't followed that part yet, so reread it before you write anything.

Exact wording is worth copying only for definitions and formulas, or when your teacher says to learn something word for word. Put it in quotation marks so you can tell the book's words from yours. Every point gets a page number (p. 101), and anything about a diagram gets the figure number too. When a note stops making sense three weeks later, that number takes you straight back.

UNC says to keep notes "brief and focused." Our rough test is length: if your notes on a section are nearly as long as the section, you're copying. Leave a wide margin for questions and for anything the lecture adds.

Diagrams, formulas and tables

A diagram is worth redrawing, small and rough. Write the labels from memory, check them against the book and fix mistakes in another color, with the figure number and page beside the sketch. Formulas get copied exactly, with what each letter stands for and its units underneath, plus one short worked example from the book. Our guide on how to take math notes goes further into worked examples.

For a big table, skip the grid. Write the pattern it shows in one sentence, plus the row or two your instructor keeps coming back to.

Example: notes from a biology section on cell transport

This one is made up: section 5.3, "Passive transport," pages 98 to 103 of an intro biology textbook. Before reading, the student wrote two questions at the top ("What crosses a membrane without energy?" and "How is osmosis different from diffusion?").

Rented, library and e-textbooks

When you can't mark the book, the notebook does all the work. Rental rules vary. Northwestern Michigan College's bookstore, for example, allows only minimal notes and markings in rental textbooks and won't take one back with excessive writing, which leaves you paying the replacement cost plus a fee. Check your own rental terms first. Library books get no marks at all, but a slip of paper used as a bookmark can hold page numbers.

The risk with an e-textbook is copy and paste. Write or type your notes from memory in a separate place. Page numbers depend on the publisher: VitalSource, which runs the Bookshelf e-textbook app, says its citation feature may not be available when a publisher leaves page numbers out of the file. If yours has none, use the section number and heading ("5.3, facilitated diffusion"). Keep your main notes outside the reading app as well. Routledge says that once an eBook rental period expires, the book "will no longer be available online or within your Bookshelf app," and we wouldn't count on notes written only inside it outliving the rental.

Turn your notes into review questions

After the chapter, write a question next to each main point, like the right column in the example, and add any end-of-chapter questions you still can't answer.

To review, cover the notes, read each question and write your answer before you check. Writing for teachers in American Educator, John Dunlosky says students should write their answers down when testing themselves and keep going, with feedback, until they recall each concept correctly at least once. In his team's 2013 review of ten study techniques, practice testing and spreading study sessions over time were the two rated high utility. Rereading and marking up text were rated low.

So was summarization, a fair challenge to the own-words notes above. We think of the summary as raw material for the questions. Answer them the day you read the chapter and a few more times before the test. Drop any you keep getting right.

Common mistakes when taking notes from a textbook

• Writing while you read, line by line, which gives you the book's sentences in the book's order.
• Copying definitions you could have explained yourself.
• Coloring whole paragraphs with a marker. UNC's guide warns against overdoing it, and a page where every line is yellow doesn't show what matters.
• Skipping the figures and the end-of-chapter questions.
• Leaving out page numbers, then flipping through 30 pages for one diagram before the exam.
• Writing good notes and never testing yourself on them.

If you want your textbook notes on your phone

If you'd like your handwritten pages on your phone as well, that's what we make. The Ophaya pen writes in ink on Ophaya dot-code notebooks, and its infrared camera reads the printed dot pattern, so each page syncs over Bluetooth to the free Ophaya Pro+ app on iPhone, iPad or Android. Ordinary paper gets the ink but no digital copy. In the app you can tag notes by course or chapter, search them by keyword, and convert handwriting to editable text with OCR, which you should check before relying on it.

The 3-in-1 set adds a 10-inch LCD writing tablet that works with the same pen. We'd use it for the self-quiz: write the answers, check them against your notes, and erase. Tap save first if a page is worth keeping.

Frequently asked questions

Should I take textbook notes before or after the lecture?

Before, if the reading is assigned for that class, so the terms are familiar when they come up. Our guide on how to take better notes covers the in-class side.

Can I use Cornell notes for a textbook?

Yes. Notes go in the wide column and your review questions go in the cue column, as in our Cornell notes guide.

How do you take notes from a textbook when you're short on time?

Keep the ten-minute preview and keep writing after each section rather than during it. Cut the length instead: one line per heading, with its page number.

Is it better to handwrite or type textbook notes?

Either works if you write from memory instead of copying. Our article on handwriting vs typing notes looks at the research.