Keying off the main points and the principal subsections will trigger
off the rest. Don’t doubt yourself on this, it will – try it.
So just choose sharp, memorable words for the principal
subsections, words like ‘Treaty of Versailles’, ‘Allies’, ‘Weaken
Germany’, ‘Revenge’, ‘Reparations’, ‘Economic slump’, ‘Middle
class’, ‘Discontented’ and so on. They don’t have to be snappy and
bright, just memorable.2 Capitalisation Having chosen your keywords they must stand
out, so you can see at a glance the structure of your notes. It’s
no good having a structure if it can’t be seen beneath the under-
growth of words. Some people choose to put all their keywords into
capitals.3 Colour If you don’t think this is sufficiently prominent, put your
keywords in different colours. This doesn’t have to be too fussy –
you’re not creating a piece of modern art – but it’s not too much
of a bureaucratic task to get into the habit of working with two pens
of different colours, one for picking out the keywords and the other
for the rest. You will be surprised just how well this works. It’s not
unusual to come across people who can still visualise accurately in
their mind’s eye pages of notes they took when they were studying
for their school-leaving exams many years ago.4 Gaps If the structure is to stand out, your notes must not appear
too crowded. To avoid this, leave plenty of gaps between your
points. This also gives you the opportunity to add other related
things as you come across them in your reading, although you need
to do this in such a way as to avoid overcrowding.5 Abbreviations Most of us use these, indeed we all tend to create
our own personalised abbreviations for those words we seem to
use most often. Even so, it’s still surprising how many students
look with open-mouthed astonishment when you list the standard
abbreviations, like the following:Therefore
Because
Leads to Æ
Increase/decrease ≠Ø
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