(Archived) Using Tags with multiple words

[WishIWasFishin 13]

For those that like and use tags.  What's your take on using tags with multiple words?  Example:  bills 2013, 2013 Chevy Truck.  Do you add an underscore to multiple words or include tag:"bills 2013".

 

What's your take?

[JMichaelTX 4,108]

I would have these suggestions:

1. Avoid multiple words -- makes search harder because you have to include all of the words in quotes
2. IF you must use multiple words separate with underscore or TitleCase
3. If you are repeating the same word in multiple words, then that word should probably be a separate Tag
   1. For example, you have "2013" in all of your tag examples
   2. IMO, you would be much better off having these tags:
      1. 2013
      2. Bills
      3. ChevyTruck
   3. So, to find bills in 2013, your Search terms would be:
      • tag:2013 tag:bills

Hope this helps.

[werpnst8 9]

I loosely follow The Secret Weapon system ( http://www.thesecretweapon.org/) to organize my tags and use multiple words to group like tags occasionally. For instance

Home-medical

Home-family fun

Etc

Work-project 1

Work-project 2

Etc

I send new notes to my INBOX notebook to be tagged, and then when I'm ready to tag, I use the drop down menu or start typing the first letters and I see all tags that start with Home or Work or whatever grouping word I've used

[WishIWasFishin 13]

I'll await for some other responses and continue my research on tags, but right now, and it seems to work.  I have tags like the following:

I understand where you're coming from with your suggestion JMichael.

 

personnal

---autos

------chevy silverado 2013

------jeep cherokee 2012

---2013 bills

------amex 2013

------coast electric 2013

------discover 2013

------verizon 2013

---2013 medical

------daughter medical 2013

------wife medical 2013

 

My idea is that in 2014 my 2013 bills would be archived.  

[jbenson2 2,146]

I completely agree with JMichael.

Avoid multiple word tags

 

One additional comment - start every title with the date YYYYMMDD

Search for intitle:2013* will find only notes in 2013

 

I prefer to use 3 character prefixes for many of my personal and business tags. I have used Dashes for several years, but an underscore is more powerful.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/30086-seeing-child-tasks-by-selecting-the-parent-tag/#entry162303

 

GrumpyMonkey uses an abbreviated date in the title -YYMMDD

Scroll down to (2) Name Files with Dates (YYMMDD) and Keywords

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=367

[JMichaelTX 4,108]

I'll await for some other responses and continue my research on tags, but right now, and it seems to work.  I have tags like the following:

I understand where you're coming from with your suggestion JMichael.

 

personnal

---autos

------chevy silverado 2013

------jeep cherokee 2012

---2013 bills

------amex 2013

------coast electric 2013

------discover 2013

------verizon 2013

---2013 medical

------daughter medical 2013

------wife medical 2013

 

My idea is that in 2014 my 2013 bills would be archived.  

 

If each line represents one Tag, then I think you are creating a lot of problems for yourself:

1. When assigning tags, you will end up having to type more characters to select the tag, whereas if they were separate tags you could just type the first few characters of the tag, then EN would select the tag, and all need do is hit ENTER.

   For Example:

   1. typing "dau" would select "daughter"
   2. typing "med" would select "medical"
2. You will be unable to find all Notes that have just one of the words in the Tag
   1. So you would NOT be able to search for just Notes with a Tag containing the word "medical"

Whatever approach you choose, review and test it closely after you have just a few Notes.  After you have thousands of Notes it might be a challenge to change approaches.  Of course, some problems may not be apparent until after you have hundreds of Notes.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,316]

There is some great advice on the forums about this. Here are a few approaches I like along with links.
http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=437

Organize only when you have to
My advice would be to use as few tags as possible, especially at the beginning. It really depends a lot on what you are planning to do with things. In my opinion, there is no point in organizing bills you will likely never look at again (if you work like me, you only look them up once a year or so).

Simplify your tagging
For example, why tag everything with a separate bill name when you could just have a tag for "bill" (I recommend always using the singular to avoid accidentally having a tag for bills and one for bill) and put "tag:bill discover" in the search bar to pull up all of your discover bills?

Title well
Or, better yet, if you are titling well (I recommend this method http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=367), then "tag:bill intitle:13* intitle:amex" would pull up every bill from 2013 for amex.

Maybe tagging is unnecessary for you
Of course, you may have noticed that the tag "bill" is unnecessary in my scheme (you can use it as an extra hook, but it's vestigial), and that is why I have pretty much abandoned tags and notebooks. I just put "intitle:13* intitle:amex" into the search and see exactly the same notes, but with almost no organizational effort. There is no need to mess with creating or managing tags if the search is pulling up everything I want.

Take advantage of the digital environment
In other words, instead of setting up a complicated and rigid filing system based on a dead tree approach to things, I recommend a simple titling system based on a digital approach. Save the complexity for important stuff that you regularly use and need to be able to quickly browse. A concrete example would be the classes I teach. They get tags, they get table of contents notes (https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#b=2b3f5418-2ab1-4ee6-8ff4-5cd977fb19ea&st=p&n=a808397a-bdee-41b3-954e-e144a45f306c), and I am accessing them on a daily or hourly basis. I don't mind spending time to organize them. The receipt from the coffee shop? I don't care. I might want to see it someday, but I don't really want to bother organizing every single piece of digitized dead tree. Naturally, if you are really into reading through your bills, receipts, and other records, then you'll want a complex system (analogous to the one I use for my class notes). Most of us are not like this, though

[WishIWasFishin 13]

There is some great advice on the forums about this. Here are a few approaches I like along with links.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=437

..........

Maybe tagging is unnecessary for you

Of course, you may have noticed that the tag "bill" is unnecessary in my scheme (you can use it as an extra hook, but it's vestigial), and that is why I have pretty much abandoned tags and notebooks. I just put "intitle:13* intitle:amex" into the search and see exactly the same notes, but with almost no organizational effort. There is no need to mess with creating or managing tags if the search is pulling up everything I want.

Take advantage of the digital environment

In other words, instead of setting up a complicated and rigid filing system based on a dead tree approach to things, I recommend a simple titling system based on a digital approach. Save the complexity for important stuff that you regularly use and need to be able to quickly browse. A concrete example would be the classes I teach. They get tags, they get table of contents notes (https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#b=2b3f5418-2ab1-4ee6-8ff4-5cd977fb19ea&st=p&n=a808397a-bdee-41b3-954e-e144a45f306c), and I am accessing them on a daily or hourly basis. I don't mind spending time to organize them. The receipt from the coffee shop? I don't care. I might want to see it someday, but I don't really want to bother organizing every single piece of digitized dead tree. Naturally, if you are really into reading through your bills, receipts, and other records, then you'll want a complex system (analogous to the one I use for my class notes). Most of us are not like this, though

 

Thank you for the suggestion!  After a few minutes of messing with my 551 notes, I'm really learning toward "Titling Very Well" and letting the EN search algorithm do it's magic!  I'll have to play with my docs for work again later tonight to make sure that I can pull up docs in a speedy matter that I may need to reference at a drop of a hat, and that may require RE-TITLING a good portion of those 551 notes, but it'll be better now than when I have 10,000+ notes!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,316]

 

There is some great advice on the forums about this. Here are a few approaches I like along with links.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=437

..........

Maybe tagging is unnecessary for you

Of course, you may have noticed that the tag "bill" is unnecessary in my scheme (you can use it as an extra hook, but it's vestigial), and that is why I have pretty much abandoned tags and notebooks. I just put "intitle:13* intitle:amex" into the search and see exactly the same notes, but with almost no organizational effort. There is no need to mess with creating or managing tags if the search is pulling up everything I want.

Take advantage of the digital environment

In other words, instead of setting up a complicated and rigid filing system based on a dead tree approach to things, I recommend a simple titling system based on a digital approach. Save the complexity for important stuff that you regularly use and need to be able to quickly browse. A concrete example would be the classes I teach. They get tags, they get table of contents notes (https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#b=2b3f5418-2ab1-4ee6-8ff4-5cd977fb19ea&st=p&n=a808397a-bdee-41b3-954e-e144a45f306c), and I am accessing them on a daily or hourly basis. I don't mind spending time to organize them. The receipt from the coffee shop? I don't care. I might want to see it someday, but I don't really want to bother organizing every single piece of digitized dead tree. Naturally, if you are really into reading through your bills, receipts, and other records, then you'll want a complex system (analogous to the one I use for my class notes). Most of us are not like this, though

 

Thank you for the suggestion!  After a few minutes of messing with my 551 notes, I'm really learning toward "Titling Very Well" and letting the EN search algorithm do it's magic!  I'll have to play with my docs for work again later tonight to make sure that I can pull up docs in a speedy matter that I may need to reference at a drop of a hat, and that may require RE-TITLING a good portion of those 551 notes, but it'll be better now than when I have 10,000+ notes!

 

 

Indeed. Glad I could help. The good thing about the titles is that they organize themselves if you do YYMMDD + keywords. Naturally, the system works perfectly fine along with tags, and it won't hurt (especially in the beginning) to throw a few tags on there just in case. Way back when I first started out with Evernote I had a lot of notebooks and tags, but over time those got folded into the titles. It's easy to trim the fat over time as you use Evernote and get a sense of what works / doesn't work for you. I just recommend not overthinking it (a notebook for every kind of bill, every project, every category of stuff), because that is not worth the effort.

[JMichaelTX 4,108]

GM and I have long debated the value and importance of using Tags.

 

IMO, the more Notes you have, and in particular, the more PDFs (and now Word/Excel files) that you have attached the more essential Tags are to preventing false positives in searches.

 

The most common method of Evernote Search is just typing words into the Search box.  Since this searches EVERYTHING in the Note, the more Notes you have the more likely it will find Notes that contain the Search words, but are NOT related to the subject you are searching for.

 

This is where Tags come in.  You create and apply Tags that are meaningful to you and the subject of the Note.  Sometimes you may want a Tag that is not even mentioned in the Note.  For example, you may apply the Tag "Politics" to many Notes of web clippings associated with politics, but the word "politics" is never used.

 

I have about 7,000 Notes now, and I run into this problem all the time.  Just because it is the easiest, I will first type my keyword into the Search box.  A lot of the time this will return a lot of Notes that are not related to my keyword.  Then, I either type the Search syntax "tag:<my keyword>" or I click on the Tag drop-down and select the tag that matches my keyword.  This almost always returns the list of Notes I was looking for.  Sometimes, of course, it may require multiple Tags and an "intitle:<keyword>" search to narrow it down.

 

Hope this helps.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,316]

GM and I have long debated the value and importance of using Tags.

 

IMO, the more Notes you have, and in particular, the more PDFs (and now Word/Excel files) that you have attached the more essential Tags are to preventing false positives in searches.

 

The most common method of Evernote Search is just typing words into the Search box.  Since this searches EVERYTHING in the Note, the more Notes you have the more likely it will find Notes that contain the Search words, but are NOT related to the subject you are searching for.

 

This is where Tags come in.  You create and apply Tags that are meaningful to you and the subject of the Note.  Sometimes you may want a Tag that is not even mentioned in the Note.  For example, you may apply the Tag "Politics" to many Notes of web clippings associated with politics, but the word "politics" is never used.

 

I have about 7,000 Notes now, and I run into this problem all the time.  Just because it is the easiest, I will first type my keyword into the Search box.  A lot of the time this will return a lot of Notes that are not related to my keyword.  Then, I either type the Search syntax "tag:<my keyword>" or I click on the Tag drop-down and select the tag that matches my keyword.  This almost always returns the list of Notes I was looking for.  Sometimes, of course, it may require multiple Tags and an "intitle:<keyword>" search to narrow it down.

 

Hope this helps.

 

True. We have had our share of disagreements. The great thing is that Evernote accommodates both of us

 

In my case, I rarely do general searches. I have thousands of PDFs (actually, textified ones http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=551) in my account and I have no trouble navigating at all. I just use the Evernote advance search grammar, especially "intitle:" to narrow stuff down. In the end, we aren't doing a whole lot different. I put the keywords in the title. You use tags. Either way, we both rely on the powerful search to filter things. I think that is the key point.

[JMichaelTX 4,108]

While you can enter your keywords as part of the Title or as Tags, it makes a big difference in terms of ease of use and consistency.

 

IMO, using Tags have NO disadvantages, but do have these ADVANTAGES:

1. Makes it much easier to consistently use the same tag since as you begin to type a Tag name to assign to a Note, EN will auto-complete what you type with EXISTING tags.  This makes it very easy to select the correct tag.
2. This auto-complete of Tags will help eliminate typos and spelling errors that you will incur when typing into the Title
3. Using Tags provides a nice list of Tag names in the Left Panel to help you remember the Tags and to quickly filter on a specific tag
4. You can organize Tags into hierarchical lists to keep related tags together, and to hide the subtags when not needed
5. Using Tags help you keep from using different words that mean the same thing, again a benefit of the auto-complete
6. The UI provides a number of ways to specify a Tag to search on, whereas with the Title you must always type in the Search term "intitle:<keyword>".  Again using the Title creates more opportunities for typos.

So while I see a number of advantages of Tags vs keywords in the Title, I don't see any advantage of using ONLY the Title.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,316]

While you can enter your keywords as part of the Title or as Tags, it makes a big difference in terms of ease of use and consistency.

 

IMO, using Tags have NO disadvantages, but do have these ADVANTAGES:

• Makes it much easier to consistently use the same tag since as you begin to type a Tag name to assign to a Note, EN will auto-complete what you type with EXISTING tags.  This makes it very easy to select the correct tag.
• This auto-complete of Tags will help eliminate typos and spelling errors that you will incur when typing into the Title
• Using Tags provides a nice list of Tag names in the Left Panel to help you remember the Tags and to quickly filter on a specific tag
• You can organize Tags into hierarchical lists to keep related tags together, and to hide the subtags when not needed
• Using Tags help you keep from using different words that mean the same thing, again a benefit of the auto-complete
• The UI provides a number of ways to specify a Tag to search on, whereas with the Title you must always type in the Search term "intitle:<keyword>".  Again using the Title creates more opportunities for typos.

So while I see a number of advantages of Tags vs keywords in the Title, I don't see any advantage of using ONLY the Title.

Are we going to debate this again

1. You have to enter the title anyways, so why not make one that is useful?

2. If the title works, why bother with the tags?

3. You can enter tags too, if you want (as you said, not only the title).

4. If you ever need to leave Evernote (I have had to move my notes out a few times for various reasons), you can be up and running in a few minutes -- you cannot take your tags and notebooks with you.

5. Working on mobile with titles is a lot easier than working with tags because the UI does not easily allow the creation of tags.

6. I don't have a problem with different words that mean the same thing, because I have a system (see the link I posted), and there is never a moment's hesitation about the main categories. I'd use the same tags anyhow, so why bother with tags?

Yes, I know you don't agree, and my system may not work well for you at all. I totally understand, and I encourage everyone (even you) to use tags and notebooks if they work well for you. My point is simply that (as you saw in the process I described earlier in the thread) tags and notebooks may become unnecessary for some people.

[jbenson2 2,146]

Point #2. If the title works, why bother with the tags?

 

Well, since you asked...
I'd have a hard time if there were no tags for my web clippings. Here are just a few reasons explaining the power of a tag over the power of a search.

Consider the different, but valid spellings of Gaddafi. It varies depending on the country and which media source you have clipped. The varieties include:

• Moammar Gaddafi
• Muammar Gaddafi
• Moammar Gadhafi
• Moammar Qaddafi
• Muammar el-Qaddafi
• Muammar al-Gaddafi

But my single, solitary tag "Gaddafi" will find all the different versions.

And it's not just a spelling issue. Searching is difficult when the media uses different titles or terms to describe an individual. Many false hits turn up especially when a person has a common name like Dean, Dayton, Richardson, or Warren to name a few. You can increase your accuracy by searching with the title and/or the full name, but you will still have false hits:

• any:"Dean" "DNC Chairman" "Howard Dean"
• any:"Dayton" "Minnesota Governor" "Mark Dayton"
• any:"Richardson" "New Mexico Governor" "Bill Richardson"
• any:"Warren" "Senate Candidate Warren" "Elizabeth Warren"

I find it easier and much, much more accurate just to use a tag.

[JMichaelTX 4,108]

Are we going to debate this again

Evidently since you continue to rebut my posts. :-)

 

5. Working on mobile with titles is a lot easier than working with tags because the UI does not easily allow the creation of tags.

Actually, the mobile (iPhone/iPad) provide a very useful UI to filter on Tags.

 

I create 99%+ of my Notes on the desktop/laptop, using EN Mac.

In particular EN iPhone V3 (may have changed in V5) provides a very easy, useful way to quickly filter on Tags.  I use this all the time.

I use my mobile EN clients mostly  to search/read my Notes.  If I create a new Note on mobile, it's  quick and dirty to just capture the content.  When I get back to EN Mac, I then clean-up any mobile notes and add Tags, etc.

 

You still have never offered any advantage to use ONLY Titles.  There is nothing you can do with Titles that we can't just as easily do with Tags, which offer many more advantages.

[jbenson2 2,146]

You still have never offered any advantage to use ONLY Titles.  There is nothing you can do with Titles that we can't just as easily do with Tags, which offer many more advantages.

 

 

After reading many of GrumpyMonkey's posts, I think he has been clear on the benefits of using just the title. It is a minimalist way of entering data, it is fast, easy and a snap to export. And the Evernote search engine can usually find the information.

 

As I mentioned above, there are some issues that require tags. So it comes down to user preference.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,316]

Are we going to debate this again

Evidently since you continue to rebut my posts. :-)

5. Working on mobile with titles is a lot easier than working with tags because the UI does not easily allow the creation of tags.

Actually, the mobile (iPhone/iPad) provide a very useful UI to filter on Tags.

I create 99%+ of my Notes on the desktop/laptop, using EN Mac.

In particular EN iPhone V3 (may have changed in V5) provides a very easy, useful way to quickly filter on Tags. I use this all the time.

I use my mobile EN clients mostly to search/read my Notes. If I create a new Note on mobile, it's quick and dirty to just capture the content. When I get back to EN Mac, I then clean-up any mobile notes and add Tags, etc.

You still have never offered any advantage to use ONLY Titles. There is nothing you can do with Titles that we can't just as easily do with Tags, which offer many more advantages.

As you said, when you are working on the iPad, you don't add tags. I work mainly on my iPad. Therefore, I don't add tags, and so the titles do the work for me. Personally, I recommend that people design their workflows around the Evernote client with the lowest common denominator of features (in my case, the iPad), and that is what I have done, but if you don't mind cleaning the notes up on the Mac, then it sounds like you have a system that works well for you.

I thought I explained the benefits of titles already! Besides the easy portability (#4), it is less work to achieve the same result. As I said in my earlier post, it simply became vestigial in my workflow, so I dropped the tags and notebooks. It isn't an either / or thing. I am not saying that titles are "better" than tags. I am saying that in practice, tags and notebooks may (for some people) become unnecessary. If it is insufficient for your needs, then by all means, make a tag for Gadamer or Gaddafi if you like. The titling system I propose works just fine with tags.

[JMichaelTX 4,108]

GM, I don't, and never have, denied that using ONLY Titles works for you.

 

I'm just not sure that it would work well for many others.

 

You have chosen to design your EN approach based on the EN Client with the least capability.

Perhaps this makes sense to you, but not to me, and I think many others.

 

I don't really want to index into this discussion, but the fact is that the iPad has been, and continue to be, an inferior product to the MacBook Air, (MBA) in many ways, especially since the 2013 MBAs have such long battery life.  There are some use cases where the iPad is superior, but not many.

 

IF a person chooses to use the iPad, or other tablet, as their primary device, then due to the lack of EN features on the iPad your system may have some advantages.

 

But if they choose any desktop/laptop that will run EN Mac or EN Win, as their primary device for entering EN Notes, then I think excluding the use of Tags is less than optimum.  Frankly, I'd be surprised that few people who have a need to collect large amounts of info into Evernote would have ONLY a tablet.  The biggest reason for this is that there are still no EN Web Clippers or EN Clearly that work as well on the Tablets as on Win/Mac.

 

And Now, Back to the TOPIC of this thread:  How to best use Tags, with or without multiple words?

 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,316]

It is true that the iPad (not just Evernote) is not as robust as the Macbook Air, and now that my MBA gets 7+ hours I certainly find myself using the MBA a lot more. Yet, I still enjoy working with the iPad. I suppose it is because I do a lot of reading, and it is better suited to the task. But, that might just be me. It isn't easy to use tags of any length on it (navigation is OK, but not creation), so I think the OP might want to take their workflow into account.

And, getting back on topic, it might just be me that finds the titles sufficient. I have created a few tags (3), and I use them on occasion, but it mainly has to do with keeping track of notes that I can delete from my account if I have issues (that is another topic entirely, as you know). I don't use them for navigation or searching. I could, I suppose, but they are unnecessary for me.

As far as the tags go, if you use them, I think we are all in agreement that the fewer words the better. I linked to a post of mine on my website that introduced a few schemes suggested by taggers on these forums. If you have a scheme to suggest (or a link to it in the forums), let us know! I'm sure it will help the OP to know what kinds of options are out thee.

[May 268]

As far as the tags go, if you use them, I think we are all in agreement that the fewer words the better

I'm not in agreement with this

I'd say using multiple words in Tags is perfectly fine. I had absolutely no problems with using multiple words as tags. I use iPad 99% of the time. I have over 20,000 notes. All my tags are also technically flat, there's no hierarchy.

For example I have

"skincare" - tag everything related to skincare with this

"My skincare wish list" - tag only stuff I plan to buy

It's a lot easier to just search for a single specific tag than multiple tags.

Just type "skin" and it autosuggests "skincare" "my skincare wish list" etc.

Assigning is also easy, just type "skin" and it also autosuggests "skincare" "my skincare wish list" etc.

See, no problem whatsoever. No point in using 2 separate Tags, i.e. "skincare" and "wish-list". It'd just take more time and effort to use.

In my example with "my skincare wish list" I don't need flexibility. The tag "wish list" alone by itself would be useless.

But if you use Tags like "bills" "2013" it might also make sense to use them as separate Tags. Depends on your use-case really, i.e. how you would want to review it later on.

Separate tags would probably be better in your particular example because it gives you more flexibility. But it doesn't mean that you should strive to use as few words as possible in all Tags. Use as many you want really.

But this is how it works on iOS. It is actually worse on Windows because you always have to remember the exact beginning of each Tag. On iOS you can just start typing with any word/letter from a Tag and get all possible autosuggestions.

[May 268]

Frankly, I'd be surprised that few people who have a need to collect large amounts of info into Evernote would have ONLY a tablet. The biggest reason for this is that there are still no EN Web Clippers or EN Clearly that work as well on the Tablets as on Win/Mac.

Dolphin browser has near perfect webclipper. Also happens to be the best iOS browser imo. It's my default browser.

[JMichaelTX 4,108]

 

Frankly, I'd be surprised that few people who have a need to collect large amounts of info into Evernote would have ONLY a tablet. The biggest reason for this is that there are still no EN Web Clippers or EN Clearly that work as well on the Tablets as on Win/Mac.

Dolphin browser has near perfect webclipper. Also happens to be the best iOS browser imo. It's my default browser.

 

 

May, how do you set Dolphin as the DEFAULT browser, so that any link you tap (in email, EN, etc) it opens in Dolphin?

[May 268]

I use BrowserChooser from Cydia (needs jailbreak obviously)

[markg 26]

There's kind of an analogy here with gmail (if you're familiar with that). People using traditional email systems typically have about 4 levels of folders to squirrel everything away. So when I moved to gmail I initially used loads of tags, but eventually I grew to trust its search capability and just "archived" stuff knowing I could find it if I needed it. This saved lots of time tagging things that I will (probably) never need again. In a similar way I think you should use the minimum number of notebooks and tags necessary to do the job in Evernote. To make sure I don't miss anything important I periodically sort my notes on "Tags" to find untagged items and process them. So everything gets a tag of some sort, even if it's just "misc".

 

If I have to use a multi-word tag (which *is* necessary from time-to-time) I always use an underscore just to avoid confusion and the possibility of accidentally mis-tagging items.

[jefito 5,587]

@markg - I find that GMail and Evernote are similar in a number of significant ways too, and your approach vis-a-vis organization is similar to mine. Some folks use hyphen ('-') to separate words in a multi-word tag, rather than underscore ('_'); perhaps it reads better for them.