This information will probably be used as evidence to help support your main points, but it also may help you devise your main points and subpoints (see "Visualizing the Hierarchy of Argument" for examples of these terms). Because information from sources may be used at any level, it's good to learn how to record information from sources at the same time that you are formulating your List of Main Points and writing your Paper: First Version.

Personal opinion among writers of research paper varies as to the best way to record information. Whether you use old-fashioned 3 x 5 index cards, notebook paper, or a computer document to store your notes, you need to be sure you record the most useful type of information. What's useful? Any information that you might incorporate AT ANY POINT in writing your research paper. Consider recording any of the following:

• The complete title and full publishing information of the source (so you may locate the source at a later time, if needed, and later prepare your Works Cited page without having to painstakingly relocate each source)

• Summaries of an author's thesis and main points (the same ideas that went into your "Summative Annotation" in Assigment 4C). NOTE: It is important to write a summary of the author's thesis and main points rather than simply making a photocopy of the document. Even though copy machines are readily available in libraries at low cost, take time NOW to summarize the author's thesis and main points--in your own words, if possible. You will save yourself time later when you might find the ideas useful but have largely forgotten them (and you will, because you are human, after all). Then, you will be forced to reread the entire source!

• Direct quotations of a few of the author's key sentences, phrases, or passages to use as quotations in your paper (make sure the quotations are "quoteworthy"). As the MLA Handbook suggests, be sure to "transcribe the material exactly as it appears, word for word, comma for comma," as I have done here, making allowances for other necessary punctuation (Gibaldi 25). (You will learn more about punctuating quotations in Assignment 5B.)

• Evidence used by the author in support of his/her main point or offered by the author as data from an original research study (including facts, statistics, examples, quotations, illustrations, comparisons, anecdotes, etc.) that you may want to use as evidence to support your own main points

• Page numbers from which ALL information has been taken, to be used in preparing the parenthetical citations or footnotes for your paper (record page numbers not only for direct quotations, but also for all summarized information; you must attribute EVERY idea borrowed from the author)