Note taking in genealogical research serves multiple purposes.

• It helps us keep track of what we want to research.
• It helps us keep track of what we have researched.
• It helps us organize our thoughts and conclusions of our research.
• We take notes in libraries, cemeteries, churches, and any place that has some sort of information we are seeking to flesh out our tree.
• We take notes as reminders of things we think of when we are away from our research or computer. For example, if we wake up in the middle of the night with an insight.

All of the notes we take must be clear and to the point and must be legible when we return to them at some point in the future.

I have a terrible habit from years of note-taking in college and grad school of writing so fast that I can’t read it later. That’s why doctors have such bad handwriting. They have muscle memory of writing that way and it is too easy to keep at it. It takes conscious effort to unlearn that. The advent of easy access to computers has kept me from overcoming that issue.