Notes form an important part of the study material used by aspirants while preparing for civil services examination.

There are different methods of making notes and one should decide which method suits you the best. There are two types of making notes, one is the LINEAR NOTES and the other PATTERN NOTES.

Linear notes is a method in which you condense the material you have read using headings and sub headings and jotting down the most important points. This method works best when making notes from a book where the material is already properly organised.
But one disadvantage of this method is that you end up copying a lot of material from the book which defeats the very purpose of condensing.

The right way to use this method is to use loose sheets of paper instead of an exercise book since it is easier to keep adding information.

Pattern Notes have to begin the topic at the centre of the page. Each line radiating from it represents a branch of the main idea. Each point is written as briefly as possible using a key word or a phrase. It is a better method to adopt because it is more flexible than making Linear notes.

Second advantage is that we can see the whole pattern at one go without actually turning the pages.

Thirdly, we can indicate the links between different topics more easily than we can do in a linear method. For example, while making notes for Science, the general layout has to follow the one given by your teacher with as little variation as possible.

There are four basic stages which should always be there, Purpose, Method, Result and Conclusion. If there is a description it will have to include a diagram and if it is recorded data, it will require a table or a graph.