Annotating your evidence
What an annotation is
- An annotation is an explanatory note attached to a piece of evidence. The standard names what it must do: describe how the evidence links to your focusing questions, identify its usefulness, recognise the perspectives in it, cross-reference it against other sources, and weigh it.
- The subject of an annotation is a source. The subject of an essay sentence is the past. This source shows... versus In 1931 the bridge... That grammatical difference is the fastest way to check you are annotating.
- Annotation is where most of the distinguishing marks in this standard are, because it is the stage where judgement is visible.
- Every piece of evidence you use gets one. Not a summary of the source — a judgement about it.
The five-part annotation
- Link — which focusing question this helps with, and what it contributes to it.
- Usefulness — what this source is good for, and what it is not good for. Both halves.
- Perspective — whose point of view it carries, and why they held it.
- Cross-reference — which other sources agree, disagree, or say nothing about this.
- Weight — how much you are relying on it, and why.
- Five sentences per source is enough. Twelve sources annotated in five sentences each is a substantial body of assessed work, and it is far more valuable than four sources annotated in a page each.
Writing the usefulness sentence
- Never write "this source is reliable" or "this source is biased" on its own. Neither is an annotation; both are verdicts with nothing attached.
- Use the form: useful for X, not useful for Y. Useful for what the council decided and when; not useful for why individual councillors voted as they did, since the minutes record outcomes and not debate.
- Ask what the creator was in a position to know. Present or absent, informed or reporting hearsay, writing at the time or decades later.
- Ask what the source was made to do. Record, persuade, sell, commemorate, instruct. A source made to persuade is weak on fact and strong on what its makers thought would work.
- State the limitation as a fact about the source, not as a complaint. Every source has limits; naming them precisely is the skill.
Recognising perspective in a source
- A perspective is a point of view held for reasons. Name the position, the reason, and the interest.
- Perspective is not the same as inaccuracy. A source can be entirely accurate and carry a strong perspective in what it chooses to mention.
- Look at what a source omits as well as what it says. Omission is where perspective usually lives, and it is invisible until you compare sources.
- A visual source has a perspective too — who framed the photograph, what is in the frame, what was left outside it, and why it was kept.
Cross-referencing, and the three things it can find
- Agreement between independent sources strengthens a claim. Say independent — items from the same newspaper or the same office do not count.
- Disagreement is the most valuable finding available, and it has three possible resolutions: one source is better placed, the two are describing different things, or the disagreement cannot be resolved from your evidence. All three are legitimate outcomes, and the third has to be said rather than hidden.
- Silence — one source covers something no other mentions — leaves a claim unsupported. Note it; do not treat a single mention as established.
- Do the cross-referencing as you annotate, not at the end. It will send you back for sources, which is exactly what should happen.
Worked Example
Worked example
Source 6 in the Mangaroa Bridge memorial inquiry (invented, written for this page) is the council minute of 14 June 1938, recording that the memorial site was moved from the bridge approach to the domain, carried by six votes to three.
Write a full five-part annotation.
Answer:
Part 1 — Link. This is my most direct evidence for focusing question 3 — why nine years passed between the accident and the unveiling. It shows that at least part of the delay was a dispute about the site, not about money, which is what I had assumed after reading the fund letters.
Notice what that annotation just did. It linked to a question and corrected an assumption, which is a stronger contribution than confirming one.
Part 2 — Usefulness, both halves. Useful for establishing that a decision was made, when it was made, and that it was contested — a six-to-three vote is a fact the minute book is designed to record accurately. Not useful for why individual councillors voted as they did, because minutes record outcomes and not debate; the reasons are exactly what this source is built not to preserve.
Part 3 — Perspective. A minute book has an institutional perspective. It records what the council resolved, in the council's own terms, and it treats the decision as procedural. It gives no indication of whether anyone outside the chamber cared, and a reader with only this source would conclude the matter was routine.
Part 4 — Cross-reference. Source 5, the 1937 editorial, argued for the bridge approach site, so the council decided against the position the newspaper had taken — which means the editorial was not describing a settled view. Source 4, the 1935 letter, discusses only money and does not mention the site at all, so the site dispute appears to have developed after 1935. Source 1, the 1998 local history, attributes the delay entirely to fundraising and does not mention the site decision. That is a disagreement with a secondary source, and it favours the minute, since the minute is contemporary and the chapter appears to be written from the newspaper.
Part 5 — Weight. I am relying on this heavily for the timing and the fact of the dispute, and not at all for motive. Its value is that it is the only contemporary written source in my set that did not pass through the newspaper's editor, which makes it my main independent check on sources 2 to 5.