Noodle – Creating Notecards
updated 10/2009
New Notecard
Alrighty. Open your list. Your sources should be listed. Click “Notecards” on the menu bar at the top (where you have My Lists, Bibliography, Notecards, Help.)
Click “new notecard” on the top right. Then, a few reminders …
Title – You must name your notecard. Give it a title that tells what’s on the notecard.
Source – If you’ve entered your sources, use the drop-down menu to indicate which source you’re using. You MUST include the source so you can cite the source within the body of your paper!
URL – If you are taking notes from a source on the Web, copy and paste the address line into this space (like a Web page or online journal/magazine article.)
Pages – For books you must include the page number(s) you’re taking notes from. You will need this when you cite your sources within the body of your paper. For magazines and journals, if you have the actual page numbers of the article, list the page number.
Tags – If you’ll give your notecard a tag, you will be able to sort your notecards later according to these tags. For example, you have a notecard about where the person went to college. Tags would include: education, college. Another notecard tells where this person went to elementary school. Tags would include: education, elementary. The card about the person’s high school would include: education, high school. You have a second card about the person’s high school. The tags for it would be: education, high school.
If you sort the cards according to education tags, you’ll be able to see just these four cards: one on elementary school, two on high school, and one on college. Then you might decide all these cards should go in the sample pile. Now you create a pile! (See blog post on Noodle – Piles.)
Direct Quotes & Paraphrases
For this research paper, do not use the direct quotation and the paraphrase notecard on the same screen. If you are going to have both for the same source, then you need to create separate notecards. You should have more than one notecard per source anyway (you “might” wind up with just one notecard for a source, but probably not.)
Placing your direct quote and your paraphrase on separate notecards will allow you more flexibility in arranging your notes in order. Take my word for it.
Go ahead and cite your source on your notecard.
Direct Quote
For a direct quote, begin by typing in the quotation marks in the Direct Quote box. Paste or type in your direct quote and remove the period from the last sentence of your quote. Insert your parenthetical reference – where you got your source. This is the information in parentheses that gives the author and page number or editor and page number. If there was neither an author or editor, you’ll have an abbreviated version of the title in place of a person’s name.
The end punctuation goes AFTER the parentheses (like this).
You should introduce your quotation. Do not just place a quotation in the middle of your paper without some type introduction. No, no, no.
If the quote comes from the author or editor of the book, you begin your sentence …
According to author (or editor if you’re using the editor because you didn’t have an author) Debbie Reeves, “Your quote goes here” (50). The page number goes inside parentheses. Since Debbie Reeves wrote the book, you’ve already given credit to the author.
If the quote comes from someone in the book that is not the author, you begin your sentence . . .
According to Professor Melanie Kemp of Quitman High School, “Your quote goes here from the great librarian you wish to quote” (Reeves 50). You are citing from a book Debbie Reeves wrote, but your quote was by someone other than the author. You gave credit to the right person for the quote and must give credit to the author at the end of the sentence in your parenthetical reference.
Paraphrase
When you are summarizing or paraphrasing information from a source in your own words, you end the last sentence WITHOUT punctuation. Then insert your parenthetical reference (the stuff in parentheses) and after the parentheses insert your period. For example, this sentence ends with author and page number (Kemp 50). Notice where the period is placed.
