Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE USE OF THE PEN Says the census-taker once in ten years, "Can you write English?" We are a bit startled by the question: "Can we?" we ask ourselves humbly. It is the question I ask you freshmen. The educated person has the implements of writing at hand and in order: his inkstand is filled and his pen does not scratch. The uneducated man searches for a penholder, and keeps the ink-bottle on the top shelf; and the difference signifies much in the lives of the two people. You live pen in hand during yourfour years in college. You acquire the useful art of note-taking,— by itself no mean intellectual exercise. The untrained note-taker brings from a lecture a rare muddle of senseless, half-caught remarks. But a good mind soon shows itself in its taking of "points" and getting them quickly to paper. And who does not know that "a note taken on the spot is worth a cartload of recollections"? That a notebook should be attractive and convenient for reference is its raison d'etre. One secret of comfort in notebooks is variety in covers, that there may be no exasperating searches for the right one. " Buy only good-looking notebooks," sounds like frivolous advice; but it is in the interests of scholarship that your notebooks should have an honorable place on your bookshelves. I would make a handsome page, with wide margins, large type, generous spacing. Paragraph freely, and drop a line often. Underline profusely, that you may catch the meaning quickly, and preserve the emphasis of the lecturer. Use parentheses, brackets, numerals, letters, and thus organize your matter as you go along and make it easy to glance at. Have divisions or pigeonholes at the back of your book, where you can put away and classify all sorts of memoranda. With these mechanical devices, the use ...