How can emojis improve our note-taking experience?
Emojis can be helpful to recall and search information within digital platforms
I have been thinking over the question of how to take a note from materials that I read, watch and listen, fairly for a long time.
Which points should be written by hand in a notebook? Which of them should be definitely kept in digital platforms such as Evernote or Notion? Which methods should be used when systematizing those notes?
I ask myself these questions over and over again, especially when I faced problems related to seeking specific information in Evernote. The final question was linked to a point I achieved: 📝🚀 How can I utilize emojis to make it easier to remember and find the relevant note kept in the digital environment?
Personal text marking language — PTML
Before embedding emojis into note-taking habits, it is necessary to comprehend a term that is issued by professionals thinking over this issue. This term is ‘personal text markup language (PTML)’. Those who are called web literates must have already grabbed that that term is derived from HTML (HyperText Markup Language).
PTML, basically, refers to the creation of a personalized note-taking language. In other words, this method is based on marking up a reading with your own notes. It helps to find important passages later.
For instance, I do not only underline the sentences that I like in novels or non-fiction I am reading, but also I am trying to classify these highlights among each other with my own personal markup language.
I put the abbreviation of 🎯GE, meaning good expression, in the margin of a specific passage that has literary value in novels. I place the expression of 🎯PI, meaning personal idea, at the end of the sentence that I highlighted if I want to add my personal thoughts regarding the piece of text. Similarly, I use the abbreviation 🎯EO, meaning eye-opening information, when I come across inspiring pieces in non-fictions.
Indeed, PTML is nothing more than tagging the highlights or the notes taken from the books. With this method, I transform the notes into a kind of imaginary computer language to find them easily as follows:
<GE>sentence with high literary value</GE>
<PI>A wonderful idea</PI>
<EO>An eye-opening information</EO>
Personal emoji marking language — PEML
I did not want to convert my personal markup language to a digital environment with this primitive form. Then, an idea has come to my mind: My abbreviations formed with letters might be transformed into emojis by creating an emoji legend that includes meaningful tags. Because emojis are micro visuals designed to be used in all kinds of digital platforms. Then, why not use it on all possible digital note-taking platforms?
Accordingly, I determined to use 🧠 referring to my personal ideas, 💡 to inspiring issues, and 🤷 to my ‘wow point’ reactions. I had initiated creating notes in Evernote with this method and put related emojis at the beginning of the quotes that I derived from the books and articles. After a while, when I look at these notes, I experienced that emojis make easier a little bit the suffering of reading notes with only black-and-white forms.
Therefore, I decided to create a personal emoji markup language in Evernote, where I keep all of my digital notes. Surprisingly, I have realized that I can search the emojis from the search bar both in Evernote and Mac OS.
Another pertinent question was how this method could be adapted to academic articles. On this matter, I was inspired by my colleague 💡 Baran Kızılırmak, with whom I correspond about note-taking practices. (Yes, geek academics write reams to each other about the methods of how to take notes.)
Baran said that he classifies the pieces of the article that he will use for his research project by placing emojis in the margins of papers that he reads. In order to do this, he adds emojis to desired places, using a text tool that can be found in almost any PDF reader software.
🧠 To sum up, no matter which software you use, you can make the notes that you take in digital environments more meaningful, readable, and systematic by using emojis.
