Adding Characters to Tags

[Turtar 1]

I would like to use Evernote to store my Bookmarks and Research sites. 

 

I am going to focus on using tags to organize my the bookmarks and research content.

 

I don't understand the specific relevance of adding characters (such as a period, a carat, or a tilde) to the front of your tags. 

 

I have seen tag structures where all of the tags start with a period. 

 

I have also seen tag structures where just the section headers start with a period, and any tags under the header don't have a character.

 

(I assume what type of character used when creating tag structures is not relevant)

 

 

My question is:

 

1. Can you explain the purpose of using a character in front of your tag?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jbenson2 2,147]

People want their important items first in a list

Adding the special character at the front of a tag pushes it to the top of their list.

[Turtar 1]

People want their important items first in a list

Adding the special character at the front of a tag pushes it to the top of their list.

 

Hello,

 

Thanks for the reply. If I was creating a structure for Bookmark tags, then I could create something like the following:

 

.bookmarks

     .business

         proposal

         projects

         etc

 

 

So the special characters could be used to highlight section heading for my bookmarks. And any bookmarks in that section would not have a special character in front of them.

 

Am I understanding how to build a good tag hierarchy correctly?

[jbenson2 2,147]

You can use either method - 1.) special characters to promote tags to the top or 2/.) parent / child tag hierarchy.

There are tons of comments about tag structure in this forum. 

 

Here is an outside link

http://brettterpstra.com/2011/12/16/some-suggestions-for-better-tagging/

 

I would not go deeper than 3 levels in tags using the hierarchy method.

You will run into some serious problems if you share your multi-level tags with another account.

 

 

Personally, I only use 2 tag levels.

My parent level tags are just holding levels with zero notes attached to it. My tags are only attached to the children tags.

[Turtar 1]

That is a great link, thanks.

 

So if I was using two tag levels then I don't need to necessarily group all the tags into a bookmark parent tag.

 

This is all great advice. Before diving into Evernote I thought I would take a moment to better understand some best practices.

 

Thank you for your recommendations. 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

As JBenson2 suggests, using a non-alpha character at the beginning of a name causes it to be sorted at the top of the list -- it's an old character sorting trick.

 

However, I'd use them sparingly.   There are some characters, like "#" and "@" that can cause problems when used in Tag names and Notebook names.

The period "." seems to work OK -- I use it in many of my tag names to separate a prefix from the primary term.  For example:   BIZ.Projects

 

Good luck.

[Turtar 1]

As JBenson2 suggests, using a non-alpha character at the beginning of a name causes it to be sorted at the top of the list -- it's an old character sorting trick.

 

However, I'd use them sparingly.   There are some characters, like "#" and "@" that can cause problems when used in Tag names and Notebook names.

The period "." seems to work OK -- I use it in many of my tag names to separate a prefix from the primary term.  For example:   BIZ.Projects

 

Good luck.

 

Hello JMichael,

 

I am going to use Evernote to replace my Xmarks. I am sure I will find additional uses for it. But at this time I want to primarily use it as a Bookmark tool.

 

I have been reading a lot of tag structure and just wanted to get a understanding of how to best setup my tags for bookmarking purposes. 

 

I have seen many examples were the sections in a tag hierarchy have a .period in front of them. So I was trying to figure out if this would a best practice or not.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Hello JMichael,

 

I am going to use Evernote to replace my Xmarks. I am sure I will find additional uses for it. But at this time I want to primarily use it as a Bookmark tool.

 

I have been reading a lot of tag structure and just wanted to get a understanding of how to best setup my tags for bookmarking purposes. 

 

I have seen many examples were the sections in a tag hierarchy have a .period in front of them. So I was trying to figure out if this would a best practice or not.

 

 

The primary (and perhaps only) reason to use a period (".") at the start of a tag is to change the sort order so that it will appear near the top of the list ahead of the normal tag names that start with an alpha character (a-z).

 

For purposes of tracking bookmarks (of web pages, right?), then I don't see a real advantage.

 

If it were me, I'd setup my tags like this, with a 2-level hierarchy and just let them sort alphabetically:

• Bookmarks
  • Biz.Proposal
  • Biz.Projects
  • Biz.etc
  • Pol.Congress
  • Pol.Elections
  • Pol.Obama
  • Pol.etc

Where "Biz." is a prefix for business related topics, and "Pol." is for politics.  Add/adjust as you see fit.

Actually, I probably wouldn't use the "BookMarks" as the parent Tag.

I would use "Business" and "Politics" as parent tags.

 

The advantage of using a prefix like"Biz." is that when you are assigning tags, you just type "biz." and Evernote shows a dropdown list of choices, all starting with "biz.", making it easy to see, remember, and select the proper tag accurately.

[Turtar 1]

 

Hello JMichael,

 

I am going to use Evernote to replace my Xmarks. I am sure I will find additional uses for it. But at this time I want to primarily use it as a Bookmark tool.

 

I have been reading a lot of tag structure and just wanted to get a understanding of how to best setup my tags for bookmarking purposes. 

 

I have seen many examples were the sections in a tag hierarchy have a .period in front of them. So I was trying to figure out if this would a best practice or not.

 

 

The primary (and perhaps only) reason to use a period (".") at the start of a tag is to change the sort order so that it will appear near the top of the list ahead of the normal tag names that start with an alpha character (a-z).

 

For purposes of tracking bookmarks (of web pages, right?), then I don't see a real advantage.

 

If it were me, I'd setup my tags like this, with a 2-level hierarchy and just let them sort alphabetically:

• Bookmarks
  • Biz.Proposal
  • Biz.Projects
  • Biz.etc
  • Pol.Congress
  • Pol.Elections
  • Pol.Obama
  • Pol.etc

Where "Biz." is a prefix for business related topics, and "Pol." is for politics.  Add/adjust as you see fit.

Actually, I probably wouldn't use the "BookMarks" as the parent Tag.

I would use "Business" and "Politics" as parent tags.

 

The advantage of using a prefix like"Biz." is that when you are assigning tags, you just type "biz." and Evernote shows a dropdown list of choices, all starting with "biz.", making it easy to see, remember, and select the proper tag accurately.

 

 

That is great advice. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my topic.