How to Make Notes and Write, a handbook by Dan Allosso and S.F. Allosso

chrisaldrich

As there aren't many modern manuals on zettelkasten-style note making, its always interesting to see new ones pop up in the space.

Dan Allosso has finished a major rewrite on his and S.F. Allosso’s earlier edition of A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences. This expanded edition has several new chapters on note making (notice that this is dramatically different than note taking) using a zettelkasten-based (or card index or fichier boîte if you prefer) approach similar to that practiced by Beatrice Webb, Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Hans Blumenberg, Mortimer J. Adler, and Walter Benjamin among many others.

The focus of the book is on note making for actively producing tangible outputs (essays, papers, theses, monographs, books, etc.). The first half discusses note making practice while the second half focuses more on writing, style, clarity, etc. While ostensibly focused on the humanities and social sciences in terms of examples, the methods broadly apply to all fields.

His presentation of zettelkasten method is briefer and potentially a bit clearer than that in Ahrens' text. Allosso also provides a somewhat different, but useful framing (source notes, point notes) and set of definitions to Ahrens (fleeting notes, literature notes, permanent notes) and others. Allosso’s version may be more easily realized by new practitioners.

There’s more detail in Dr. Allosso’s announcement video:

Availability

How to Make Notes and Write is available at Minnesota State’s Pressbooks site for reading online, or download as a .pdf or .epub. If you’d like a physical copy, they’re also available for purchase on Amazon.

Dr. Allosso has also been making a series of YouTube videos of himself reading the book aloud for those who'd prefer to watch/listen to the book.

(Chapter 2 is on Vimeo)

For those in the educational spaces, Dr. Allosso has given the book a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), so that people can use it as an Open Educational Resource (OER) in their classes and work.

For teachers who are using social annotation with tools like Hypothes.is in their classrooms, Allosso’s book is an excellent resource for what students can actively do with all those annotations once they’ve made them.

ZettelDistraction

He goes on a bit. I was waiting to hear the definitions. The terms Source Note and Point Note are well chosen. Source Note, for citations with or without annotations, is clearer than the Literature Note of Ahrens. Literature Notes and Source Notes tend to become absorbed into digital reference managers as citations. There is some utility in retaining Source Notes in a digital Zettelkasten, even with a reference manager. The term Point Note is a reminder that a Point Note (what we would call a Zettel) should make a point, which gets to the point without the detour through "atomicity." The term Zettel doesn't make this point, nor does the not-explicitly-defined Smart Note of Ahrens, which one discovers is a Permanent Note that isn't a Literature Note--except when Ahrens seems to use the term Smart Note for every type of note he describes. There are five of them. Ahrens doesn't provide a term for the most important notes of his system.

Going back to paper simplifies the method. The numbering system he uses is sensible--a bit like mine in that he chooses a set of categories of interest to him to identify subject matter, and then assigns a card number after a separator.

It's easier to skip the personal remarks in the PDF, which is (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) and freely downloadable. The remarks on misconceptions are valuable.

One nice feature of the system is that it would work with both digital and physical notes simultaneously.

We have yet to see a pamphlet on Zettelkasten. A stripped-down version of the book would be useful, though for a more limited audience interested in Zettelkasten. As it stands, "How to Write Notes and Write," is head and shoulders above the others I have read on the subject.

Jeremy

I read the book based on your enthusiasm, Chris, and while I learned something from the chapters on making notes, I was very disappointed in the second half, on writing. He is so wrong on the passive I find it hard to believe he ever actually researched it. But no matter, he is in good company on that. I just hope not too many people think they will truly understand the passive after reading this book.

ZettelDistraction

@Jeremy Do you follow Geoffrey K. Pullum on the passive? I agree, the second half of the book is misleading and unsophisticated on the passive. It was after reading Pullum's comments on Strunk and White at the Language Log and elsewhere that I was compelled to purchase that descriptivist doorstop, the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. A far more competent source than Allosso on writing is Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph P. Williams and Joseph Bizup.

Since How to Make Notes and Write is published under (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), it's possible to cut the fluff (including the author's tendency to overexplain the inclusion of various epigraphs), remove the second half, refer the reader to better sources of instruction for writing, and distribute for free a derivative version under the same license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) with the necessary credits.

scottscheper

I read it and found it enjoyable. I think Dan's simplicity may be helpful for many (Source and Point Notes). Of course, the best part of the book was seeing his analog notecards 🗃🏴‍☠️

chrisaldrich

@Jeremy I certainly take your point on that score. I had read through a previous edition of just the writing portion which was originally written by S.J. Allosso from a prior generation, so I didn't read through all of the second half of this edition of the book. I haven't compared them, so I'm not sure how much revision, if any, has happened in the writing advice part of the text. I was definitely more interested in his take on note making in the first half.

andang76

I've read the firt seven chapters today.

It contains very good ideas.

I like very much the minimalism of the zettelkasten reduced to "source notes" and "point notes". I consider "point note" the most suitable term I've met among the various definitions of main notes of a zettelkasten.

The example about the role of women in the Odysseus is very illuminating about the purpose of idea development and writing to be pursued.
The key role of interpretation (I've personally thought appropriate "merging" his theory of interpretation with what I've recently read into Antinet Zettelkasten about perception and perspective).
It's an evidence of how can be possibile to write "original stuff" starting from "ideas by others", so it answers to the very often met question "do I consider only my own ideas into zettelkasten?" His "broad definition" of originality is a breakthrough.

Chapter 7 about writing the output is a small treasure chest of gems

It's not a book that deeply describes zettelkasten, but in few pages contains principles that can improve it's understanding. It can helpful for understand, for example, the difference between literature notes and main notes.

ZettelDistraction

@andang76 said:
I like very much the minimalism of the zettelkasten reduced to "source notes" and "point notes". I consider "point note" the most suitable term I've met among the various definitions of main notes of a zettelkasten.

I agree. "Point note" is close to self-explanatory. I was too dismissive concerning Allosso's advice about the passive--not because he was right. Perhaps the advice was more limited--always use the active voice when writing point notes, though that could be limiting. The advice to only use the active voice rules out omitting details unknown or uncertain at the time of writing (journalism comes to mind, notes taken while learning is another) or because the writer is building suspense, among other possibilities.

andang76

@ZettelDistraction said:

@andang76 said:
I like very much the minimalism of the zettelkasten reduced to "source notes" and "point notes". I consider "point note" the most suitable term I've met among the various definitions of main notes of a zettelkasten.

I agree. "Point note" is close to self-explanatory. I was too dismissive concerning Allosso's advice about the passive--not because he was right. Perhaps the advice was more limited--always use the active voice when writing point notes, though that could be limiting. The advice to only use the active voice rules out omitting details unknown or uncertain at the time of writing (journalism comes to mind, notes taken while learning is another) or because the writer is building suspense, among other possibilities.

I haven't caught the issue you have described. Maybe it is in the chapters I haven't read.