Typing - Blog Posts

stop what you're doing.

listen to me.

breathe.

it's okay to be overwhelmed at the idea of writing in your wip. it's okay to procrastinate. you have all the time in the world. it's okay to write in it months later, if you need that break, if you can't find inspiration.

stop stressing over your penmanship. it can be fixed. stop stressing over your word choice. that's what editing is for.

if your wip feels incomplete, don't start over. reread, plan, write. save the editing for after it's all on paper.

as writers, we often terrorize ourselves for not writing perfectly the first time. thing is, we don't realize that we're giving ourselves reason to stop writing. nothing you write will ever be perfect the first time, maybe not even the second time.

you just have to remember to breathe, come back to it later, and leave those worries behind.

LOOK WHO FINALLY HAS A WORKING STYLUS AGAIN LETS GOOOOOOOOOOO (Posted 19th January, 2024)

I remember back in my compulsory education they taught us to use the keyboard like this but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single person type like this ever.

I’m cryung

I got some new nails and it’s like impossible to type, my friends are suffering more than me

techno-logic

A lot of people are turning to using tablets or laptops to take their notes, for reasons that I won’t go into in this post. But, while there are lots of posts about taking handwritten notes, there don’t seem to be very many about taking notes using a laptop/tablet (I’ll refer to as digital notes from now on).

Set up folders for each topic. Create these folders before lectures/class and save your notes into the correct ones. It will keep all of your notes organised and easy to find. You might want to have different folders for lecture and reading notes. Develop a system which is intuitive for you.

Know the program. Choose which program you’re going to use to take your notes. There are lots of options available, including Microsoft Office. If you can’t afford Office, then you can look into (illegal) free downloads of it. If you have Office, you could also use Onenote. Alternatives include free programmes like Evernote which allow you to access your notes from anywhere on any device.

Get a template (M Office only). On Microsoft word, you can download different templates. See if there is a template that you can use for taking your notes. Alternatively, you can create your own template by adjusting the margins, font, size, etc. and saving your preferences. If you don’t want to use a template, you can just use the default settings.

Name the notes. Make sure that you name the notes so that you know what’s inside. On Microsoft word, when saving documents you can add tags. Then you can search these tags for any documents with that specific tag. I’ve found this to be a really useful organisational tool.

Do you need anything to take your notes? If you’re using a tablet, you can buy Bluetooth keyboards which will connect and can be quicker than typing on the screen. You can also buy a stylus which will let you write like you would with a normal pen; some devices also have the option to convert your handwriting to typed notes.

Get to know your keyboard. If you’re using a keyboard, then I suggest looking at this website which will teach you how to touch type.

Become familiar with keyboard shortcuts. Especially for things like bold, italicise, underline, highlight.

Downloads. If the teacher/lecturer puts up any material for the lecture download it. These are typically powerpoint slides. When I take notes next year, I will download these and split screen between word and powerpoint. Then I’ll be able to copy and paste material and diagrams straight from the actual powerpoint, speeding up my process.

Back up. Please, back up your notes on google docs. If your computer crashes you will have a backup of your notes that will be essential to studying! Again, for the people in the back, back up your notes!

Creating your notes. Use the technology to your advantage.

Use bold/highlight/italic. Make your heading and subheadings stand out from the rest of your text.

Use bullet points.

You can even make sub bullet points (like this) using the tab key to follow your line of thought/reason.

Highlight the important things; you could even use different colours for different things. E.g. yellow for important dates, blue for important quotes.

Develop an annotation style. For example, sometimes you might fall behind a bit, and miss a detail. When this happens to me I insert a series of dots into my notes, like this (……..) and I know that means I missed something so I can return to the recordings to find out what I missed. You could use question marks (?) to indicate something that confuses you that you need to do more reading on. There are lots of different symbols so you can develop your own system.

This also works with words. If you have certain words which you’re typing a lot then you can make them shorter and easier to type. For example, the word “participants” comes up a lot in my course, but I use “ps” because it’s shorter and quicker to type.