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Laryssa Savage
Dara Vosoughi
GART 1510
January 20, 2025
Taking Notes: Comparing Handwriting and Typing
Before university, I strictly stuck to handwritten notes, but after starting university, I
switched to notes taken on a laptop. There is a lot of debate surrounding laptop notes and
whether they are beneficial in a classroom setting; the main concern is that they may be more
distracting than paper notes (Mueller and Oppenheimer pg.1). While paper notes and laptop
notes can both use the same notes format and can use similar tools, laptop notetaking can be
more efficient and paper notes can be better for memory retention.
Upon close examination, paper notetaking and laptop note-taking are essentially the
same, merely differing in medium. You can use the same notetaking format or strategies with
medium. If you find Cornell notes to be helpful you can use them on paper or on your laptop.
You can use bullet points to emphasize key points or highlight important information with
medium. Most importantly, both mediums require you to think critically. As Joseph Sigel
notes, “By creating this truncated version of the source text, the listener must make decisions
about what to prioritize by recording in notes and what might be perceived as extraneous or
non-essential information that was included in the original text but omitted from the notes”
(Sigel pg. 2). Both mediums require you to listen and think critically about what you’re
taking notes on.
In as much as laptop and paper note taking have some similarities, there exist a few
distinguishing elements that make one more effective and productive than the other in several
ways. Laptops are always more efficient to take notes with compared to using paper. You can
simply carry your laptop around and have a different file for each class rather than carrying
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around a different notebook for each class. Moreover, working on the laptop helps in taking
down notes much faster compared to paper. Although laptop notes are more effective, they
are also prone to distractions that paper notes do not have. The Internet, various applications,
games, and other easily accessible electronic technologies can distract you while taking notes
on a laptop (Deselle & Shane pg.1). Furthermore, taking notes by hand has been proven to be
more beneficial for memory retention. In Oppenheimer and Mueller’s experiment, longhand
notes takers outperformed laptop note takers on test scores, even though participants using
computers took longer “transcription-like” notes during the movie (Mueller and Oppenheimer
pg.2).
Although laptop and paper notetaking can employ the same style and tools, taking
notes on paper may be more effective and improve memory recall. However, I find that using
a laptop works better for me. Typing allows me to capture more details quickly, and digital
notes are easier to organize, edit, and search. The convenience of having everything in one
place and the ability to use digital tools suits my study habits. While paper notes may have
their advantages, I plan to stick to laptop notetaking in the future as it aligns better with my
learning style and needs.
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Works Cited
Mueller, Pam A., and Daniel M. Oppenheimer. “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard:
Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking.” Psychological Science,
vol. 25, no. 6, 2014, pp. 1159–68, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581.
Siegel, Joseph. “Pen and Paper or Computerized Notetaking?” Science Direct, 16 Dec. 2022,
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666557322000477#bib0003.
Desselle, Shane P, and Patricia A Shane. “Laptop Versus Longhand Note Taking in a
Professional Doctorate Course: Student Performance, Attitudes, and Behaviors.”
Innovations in pharmacy vol. 9,3 1-12. 5 Nov. 2018, doi:10.24926/iip.v9i3.1392
