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How To Write An essay Part 3 - Compiling Your notes

Now that you've done the bulk of your research, you should have several pages (on the computer, on paper, or both) of point-form notes. In those notes should be full quotations you intend to use or paraphrase later, as well as general notes that you've already summarized or paraphrased. If you sit down to write the essay with this pile of unsorted stuff, inevitably you'll have trouble deciding where to begin and you'll keep leaving things out. It is much easier to group the notes, plan the essay, and then write, rather than trying to stick random bits in as you go.

This is where a good supply of coloured pens or highlighters comes in handy (on the computer, you can make use of a word processor's various coloured highlighting tools). If these things are unavailable, you can still make do by coming up with notations that indicate the different sections and writing them beside the individual points in the notes.

Look at your focus. Chances are it has several different elements to it, and now is the time to break out those elements separately. Don't worry about what element should come first or last, that will be sorted out in the planning stage next. For now, you're just going to group your notes according to where they fit into your focus.

For our pretend focus of "The life of Joe Smith (1856-1902) and how he contributed to the field of widget watching," we would pick out the following subtopics:

Joe Smith's personal life
Joe Smith's contributions to widget watching
widget watching information
In some cases, the subtopics themselves may contain further subgroups, so break those out as well:

Joe Smith's personal life
childhood
schooling
things that lead Smith to widget watching
adult life
death
Joe Smith's contributions to widget watching
the New York group
the widgetiscope
Smith's publications on widget watching
other contributions he made
Widget watching information
definition of widget and widget watching
brief mention of widget watching during Smith's lifetime
Now, assign colours and/or notations to the subgroups right on your written list, so you don't forget what you meant later. Your choices here will vary according to your personal preferences. You may wish to use letters representing the group that are simply alphabetical, or that directly represent the word. Most of mine represent the word:

Joe Smith's personal life - blue highlighter
childhood - blue highlighter plus C
schooling - blue highlighter plus S
things that lead Smith to widget watching - blue highlighter plus X (X is for "extra" in my head)
adult life - blue highlighter plus A
death - blue highlighter plus D
Joe Smith's contributions to widget watching - pink highlighter
the New York group - pink highlighter plus NY
the widgetiscope - pink highlighter plus W
Smith's publications on widget watching - pink highlighter plus P
other contributions he made - pink highlighter plus O
Widget watching information - yellow highlighter
definition of widget and widget watching - yellow highlighter plus D
brief mention of widget watching during Smith's lifetime - yellow highlighter plus X
If I didn't have highlighters available, I probably would substitute by putting letters representing the main groups before the ones representing subgroups, such 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。