Capturing how-to processes in a reference note
Hi all, first-time poster.
I am just getting started with ZK and am writing my first reference note using, of all things, Bob Doto's "A System for Writing."
I am creating a digital ZK system using Noteplan, which I have used for a long time in other areas of my life.
In one of the chapters, Doto includes a nice list of the key processes of ZK, and I am trying to figure out how to capture it in a reference note.
From what I have learned through his book and some YouTube stuff, my reference list of thoughts/takeaways is essentially a list of brief statements and page numbers of where they occur in the text. But that doesn't play well with pasting a couple of paragraphs of text or a lengthy bulleted list.
How do you handle these situations? The only thing I can think of is putting the brief statement and page number, and then below it, putting the steps in an indented quote.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
@Wook
Welcome to the forum!!
I'm not sure precisely what you are asking. I don't differentiate between different kinds of notes - they are all just zettels to me. If I decide to quote something in a zettel, then I will also state the source right after the quote. But...my needs are simple; maybe this wouldn't work for you.
If you are working in Markdown, then placing the symbol ">" followed by a space designates the following material as a quote, for example:
You could mark the reference in some way, so that you could later search all references. One idea would be to start each reference with a unique symbol, such as "&", or put each reference within curly brackets, such as {Bob Doto, "A System for Writing", p.27}
I also keep my Zettelkasten in NotePlan, along with other information. The Zettelkasten portion is simply a series of notes which includes a UID (e.g., 202512271630) in the note title and thus also in the corresponding file name, all contained within a folder called "Zettelkasten". I use the PARA system to organize everything else, that is not officially part of my Zettelkasten, although even that material can sometimes be linked to zettels.
You can find some recent discussion on how I use Noteplan here
My main NotePlan folders look like this:
Oh...and I use the Johnny Decimal system to organize subfolders within PARA20-Areas:
My reference notes are in Google drive (similar to you). I typically have three parts to the notes... at the bottom all the excerpts I want to save, occasionally with comments on why I thought they were important to save. Above that (if there is a lot of text), I make my own "index" with key words and page numbers. And, most important, above that, I do my own summary. Sometimes it's a description, sometimes a list of the the 3-5 most important things I got out of the text. Hope that helps!
Thanks both of you. What I ended up doing was making it a quoted section "> ". Here is what I did.