Zettelkasten Forum


Citing your own ideas/observations

How do you prefer to cite or indicate your own ideas / observations in the ZK?

Comments

  • edited November 2019

    With great joy and pleasure. :wink:

    Post edited by Sascha on

    I am a Zettler

  • If it's a thought on a text-note, I use square brackets for my own thoughts. But I also have zettels that are just own thoughts on their own, in that case I don't mark it.

  • I use CriticMarkup and its associated syntax so that I can see and find my comments using markdown tools such as Marked 2 or Multimarkdown Composer 4. CM can also be used with tools such as BBEdit, TextExpander, and Keyboard Maestro. I assume there others as well.

  • @kevin said:
    How do you prefer to cite or indicate your own ideas / observations in the ZK?

    I write as if I am writing just a text. If I am refering to other peoples content I reference it. But why should I indicate that something is my own idea?

    I am a Zettler

  • @Sascha said:

    @kevin said:
    How do you prefer to cite or indicate your own ideas / observations in the ZK?

    I write as if I am writing just a text. If I am refering to other peoples content I reference it. But why should I indicate that something is my own idea?

    E.g. when taking notes from a book, it can be very useful to distinguish comments (own ideas) from the ideas of the author. At least I took it that the question was about some similar situation. (And from past experience I know that it is very easy to confuse the two -- which is a real PITA when you go back to cite the book...)

  • All of the above. Separating my own opinion on a bit of into from a source.

    Also, if I throw my own thought into the system, then run across it 2 years later, how to distinguish an original thought from a note from a source that wasn’t cited by accident.

  • I conventionally name all my notes that are from books with the bibtex citekey of the book -- this way always know that it was a book note. In those docs I just use double brackets for my own comments.
    xxxxxxxxx [[what does this mean? Cf. also abc. This seems wrong.]]
    Or, if it's a short bit and I have a lot to say about it I just draw a horizontal line and say NOTE: ////.

  • EDIT: also, I think there is right and wrong way of doing this as long as you are consistent with yourself (otherwise you'll run into the "2 yrs later" problem...).

  • Back in 2009, when I started adding a "category" prefix to my note names, e.g. R2 indicated "referencing a 2nd party". R1 was "referencing myself" then. R3 would be akin to blindly citing something.

    This did provide no benefit at all over the years, and I eventually abandoned this kind of categorization completely. Instead I was fine with the simple convention from writing texts, plus a Zettelkasten-related one:

    • when there're quotation marks + a reference, that's a direct quote
    • when there are no marks + a reference, that's a paraphrase in my own words
    • when there's a [[wiki link]] to another note, that's a paraphrase of my own words

    The latter sounds most to what you were asking initially. I never quoted myself and references a note via link, but I guess that'd complete the symmetric list above :)

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • @ctietze Please note, that you didn't just abandoned those categorisations. It was years of me negging you to the death with all my skills of being annoying. :kissing_heart:

    @kevin It is quite simple like in a book: The default is that you wrote something yourself. And any reference signifies that it is not purely your own. :smile:

    I am a Zettler

  • @Sascha Oh no, that, too?! 😭

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • In the Zettelkasten, everything that lacks a reference is my own idea. If it later turns out someone else had the same idea, I simply add the reference. At that point it does not matter anymore whether I had the idea too. This is the same in texts (cf. @Sascha ).

    In summaries, I use square brackets to signify my own ideas, because everything else is transcribed from the text. It would be a waste of time to add the same reference to every sentence.

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