[boopmaster]

When taking notes by hand from a lecture, all I can really focus on is the typography. As in, will I be able to recognize this later?

Maybe the repeated parsing and checking for legibility is the foil that improves memory retention!

[magicalhippo]

For me it's just the act of writing. When preparing for an exam I would write tons of notes on paper, but I hardly read them. The act of writing on paper was enough.

I tried skipping the paper but typing notes didn't have close to the same effect, by an order of magnitude or two.

I still do this in meetings with customers and similar, keeping a small notebook. I'll write down key points, but I very seldom have to reference it later.

[nottorp]

Perhaps just slowing down to handwriting speed is enough to trigger retention?

Would be interesting to know if people who take shorthand notes (they still do that at trials?) remember what they've written.