Note signifiers

Sociopoetic

@Will introduced me to the idea of using signifiers in the titles of one's notes as a way to quickly see something (like a structure note) without having to search for it. I quickly adopted this idea and have ended up creating several signifiers, leading me today to create a legend for such things. I'll add that to make the signifiers stand out to me, I used Greek letters. Being a humanist scholar, I know enough Greek for this to be useful. Other users likely prefer other symbols.

What signifiers do you use?

s41f

Don't have any signifiers. But I'm intrigued by the practice. Do they go in the note title?

I like the idea of a "stack"...a short stack...I love hotcakes.

zk_1000

@Sociopoetic I don't use signifiers in the title. I have a question on this : Is the order in which they appear in search results significant to you? For example, such that every stack appears before any structure or similar. And if so, in which order so they appear?

Darryl

@Sociopoetic I too use Greek letters myself in the titles of my zettels. Here is my usage:

Σ = Structure note (as in summation in mathematics)

β = Buffer note (i.e. a note in a beta stage); does not have a UID in title (only in body as a link)

Ω = Master Hub; does not have a UID in title (only in body as a link)

Structure notes can be found with search, but buffer notes and Master Hubs float to the top of the list in TA. I’m also experimenting with notes with a Σ without a UID in the title as a sub-hub, but not sure if they will be useful yet.

Sociopoetic

@Darryl , I like the idea of one for buffer notes also! Though, I find that I return to recent notes frequently enough that I often don't need a buffer note. Your "Master Hub" sounds similar to my use of ∆. I'm still grappling with "hub" note vs. "structure" note. Can you elaborate on your usage?

@s41f , yes, they go in the title. So, ∆ Geography is a sort of annotated list of my numerous (hundreds by now, probably) notes on GIS, cartography, etc. One of those notes is also ∑ Spatial Analysis that I know has links to explanations of different analytical methods, formulae, etc.

@zk_1000 , order in search isn't important for me. However, structure notes are higher-level than stack notes, and in the example above. The stacks allow me to know where I can find a note with many links on closely-related topics.

Darryl

I'm still grappling with "hub" note vs. "structure" note. Can you elaborate on your usage?

@Sociopoetic I use hub notes as major departments in my ZK through which I link everything through. @Will has explained it excellently here:

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/8137/#Comment_8137

Sociopoetic

@Darryl said:

I use hub notes as major departments in my ZK through which I link everything through.

Okay, this would be my Δ, then. I only have a few of those, but they act as gates to different fields I do my knowledge work in (like geography). My stacks would be some flavor or structure note.

Phil

Also inspired by @Will, here are mine:

MikeBraddock

@Sociopoetic I experimented with signifiers but ended up finding a different approach.

Using prefixes to group notes and control sort order.

By leveraging the century of a UID - YYYYMMDDHHMI, I control sort order and position of index and structured notes to the top of the note list. I override the century from 2020 to 5020, 4020, 3020, 1020 moves a note to the bottom of the note list.

I basically changed my UID to be SYYYMMDDHHMI, where S is the prefix for sorting and grouping notes. This retains the date and time stamp of a note and gives me the ability to sort and group notes based on their note type.

Normal notes and zettels retain the 2 digits 20 for the 21st century.

This allowed me to consistently use UID's at the beginning of file names and by leveraging the first position group and sort Index and structured notes to the top of the note list.

Also, I leave the UID off of notes in a draft state, so they sort above my Main Index note.

My note list looks this:

And this:

matti

This might be interesting for the discussion: Getting Things Done with Semantic Notes.

This is more about using notes for GTD but it came immediately to mind.

ctietze

I totally stole the idea for glyphs from there, like § for projects/outlines/structure notes Affecting the sort order in every app in the same way works less reliably with special characters, though, I found.

(Apparently I only liked to that site in passing over the years, which is a shame for nostalgic reasons, so it's good to have that mentioned here.)