16 THE FACTS ON FILE GUIDE TO GOOD WRITING of which are left in the vats with the juice during the early stages of the fermentation process. White wines are made either from green grapes or from purple grapes. In the latter case, the grape skins are removed before the fermentation process commences. Rosé wines are sometimes produced by mixing red and white wine, but a true rosé is made like a red wine, from purple grapes, except that the skins are left in the vats for a much shorter period and only until the required pink coloring has been achieved. Sparkling wines are distinguished by the fact that they are bubbly and need to be kept in special bottles. Carbon dioxide gas is either introduced artificially into the wine after it is made or produced by a secondary fermentation process. Sparkling wines are drunk mainly to celebrate festive occasions, and the most famous varieties are produced in the Champagne region of France. Fortified wines are so called because a quantity of stronger liquor— usually grape brandy—is added during fermentation. This increases the alcoholic content of the wine from the 9 to 14 percent of standard table wines to between 15 and 22 percent. Some fortified wines, such as sherry and vermouth, are drunk mainly as appetizers before a meal, while others, such as port, are usually drunk after a meal as digestives.
If your principal interest is in wine making, there are certain things in this passage that might or might not be relevant. The passage, for instance, remarks on the occasions when the different types of wine are generally drunk. That is quite a handy way of defining their differences but is not necessarily of major importance—not, at least, of equal importance to the fact that there are three basic categories of wine. You need to be able to distinguish between major and minor pieces of information. The easiest method is to emphasize the more important facts by underlining them or highlighting them with a fluorescent marker. With this in mind, your first note might be XYZ ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRY “WINE” (PAGE XXX) 3 types of wine –Table wine (drunk with meals) –Sparkling wine (dr. at celebrations) –Fortified wine (dr. before/after meals) Using a certain amount of abbreviation or personal shorthand speeds things up considerably. Just make sure that everything is reexpandable afterward. Safety first suggests that you write out a key word in full the first time before abbreviating it and that you should not be too cryptic; if you reduced (dr. at celebrations) to (dr. celebs), for example, you might find yourself wondering if you had “drunken celebrities” in mind rather than “drunk at celebrations.” Omitting all or almost all the vowels in a word is a fairly standard trick, so you might reduce (dr. at celebrations) to, say, (dr. @ celbratns) without forfeiting too much in the way of clarity. People who are used to sending text messages between cell phones are likely to be better at this than people who are not.