If you know you must miss a meeting, call the minute taker and express your regrets. Usually before considering the business scheduled for the meeting, members will check to determine that the record of the last meeting is accurate. After this, the order of events of the agenda may vary and, thus, the order of the minutes. It is common to deal first with reports because that can often be done quickly so members are still fresh when they reach the most important items of the meeting. There is one other convention that some groups follow.
Some recorders format the minutes so that there is a column at the right margin.
This method of organizing minutes makes it easier for members to quickly remind themselves of the work to be done. There are even fewer conventions about the appearance of the minutes documents. The keyboarder of the sample minutes uses block capitals, bolding, and sub-points to make it easy for readers to tell at a glance the information in each part of the minutes. A minute taker who creates documents with consistent use of these embellishments creates minutes that will be increasingly easy for members to use. Examining the relationship between the simulated meeting and the minutes for it will help you learn the principles of agenda creation and minute keeping.