The Art of Indexing Your Paper Notes

September 12, 2019 by kris de decker Filed Under: Paper, Writing

“One of the biggest advantage of electronic documents has always been that they’re easy to search. Good ol’ Ctrl-F has probably saved millions of hours since its invention. But what if you’d rather have something on paper, but you still need to be able to search it? I don’t have a keyboard and a little display in the front of my notebooks, but I do have an index, and in a large number of cases it works nearly as well.”

“The index seems like a lost art nowadays with so many references moving online. Maybe that’s not so surprising: making a generally good index is quite difficult and historically has been a profession, and there’s actually an organization called the American Society of Indexers. But if you just want to help yourself find stuff when you put it away in your notebook or binder, it couldn’t be easier to start an index.”

Read more:

Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop

November 13, 2015 by kris de decker Filed Under: Education, Random, Writing

notetaking“Taking notes by hand requires different types of cognitive processing than taking notes on a laptop, and these different processes have consequences for learning. Writing by hand is slower and more cumbersome than typing, and students cannot possibly write down every word in a lecture. Instead, they listen, digest, and summarize so that they can succinctly capture the essence of the information.”

“Thus, taking notes by hand forces the brain to engage in some heavy “mental lifting,” and these efforts foster comprehension and retention. By contrast, when typing students can easily produce a written record of the lecture without processing its meaning, as faster typing speeds allow students to transcribe a lecture word for word without devoting much thought to the content.”

Read more: A learning secret: don’t take notes with a laptop. Via The Antioch Review.

Thanks to David Edgerton. Picture credit.

A Logographic Script for Europe

January 2, 2014 by kris de decker Filed Under: Books, Language, Media, Random, Writing

Like Europe, China has many languages ​​and cultures. In contrast to Europe, everyone in China communicate with each other through a common script: Hanzi. A text drawn up in Chinese characters for every literate Chinese to understand, even if they don’t share a common language. Europe has tried to forge unity through a common currency, the market, regulation and parliament. These elements have so far not delivered a broad common identity. Europe is separated by language.

logographic script for europe

Babel is a project initiated by Monnik and Studio Rooiejas in which they design and develop a logographic script for Europe. With a logographic writing we could read (and write) each other’s newspapers even if we can not understand each other. A design solution through which one could instantly create a truly European public space. In a logographic writing each word or concept is represented by a separate symbol, called a logogram. Because these characters have a symbolic and not a phonetic value they can be used universally, even by people who do not speak each other’s languages.

A logographic language as a solution to Europe’s “confusion of tongues” sounds far-fetched and obvious at the same time. It would be practical if it existed, completely impractical to implement, and most of all insightful and evocative food for thought.

See and read more at Monnik and Flickr.

Kremlin Replaces Computers by Typewriters

July 15, 2013 by kris de decker Filed Under: Computers, Writing

“Russia’s Federal Protection Service (FSO), the Kremlin agency that protects state officials like the president and the prime minister, has ordered 20 typewriters in an apparent bid to avoid leaks and surveillance like those revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.” Read more. Via Slashdot.