How to write meeting minutes

The single most common mistake in minute-taking is trying to capture the discussion. Nobody rereads a transcript. What people come back to, sometimes years later, is one thing: what was decided, and who agreed to do what by when.

Minutes are a record for people who were not there and for the version of you who has forgotten. Write for those two readers.

What goes in

The header. Meeting name, date, time started and finished, location or platform. Who was present, who sent apologies, who chaired, who took the minutes.

Per agenda item:

• Discussion — two or three neutral sentences on what was considered. Not who said what, unless attribution matters.
• Decision — what was agreed, stated plainly and in full. This is the part that must be unambiguous.
• Action — what will happen, who owns it, and by when. One named person, not "marketing".

Anything deferred, with a note of when it returns.

Date of the next meeting.

What stays out

Who disagreed and how strongly, unless the person asked for their dissent to be recorded — which they are entitled to do, and which should then be minuted in the words they used.

Verbatim quotes. Personal opinions about people. Your own commentary. Anything said in confidence or off the record. Salary and disciplinary detail unless the meeting was convened for that and the minutes are restricted.

Remember that minutes can be disclosed — through a subject access request, a freedom of information request, in litigation, or simply by being forwarded. Write every line as though it will be read by someone outside the room, because it may be.

Tense and voice

Past tense, third person, impersonal. "The committee agreed to postpone the launch until January." Not "we decided" and not "I think we should".

Report decisions in the passive where the actor is the group and in the active where an individual owns something: "It was agreed that…" but "Chidi will circulate the revised budget by 12 September."

Doing it in the meeting

Take the agenda into the meeting as your template with the headings already in place — this alone halves the work. Leave space under each item for decision and action.

Write decisions and actions as they happen, in full, at the moment they are agreed. Do not plan to reconstruct them later; you will not.

Interrupt to confirm. "Can I just check the action — Amina, revised figures by the 12th?" This is the single most valuable thing a minute-taker does, because it is very often the moment the room discovers it did not actually agree.

If you are also participating, ask someone else to take the minutes. Doing both badly is the usual outcome.

Afterwards

Write them up within 24 hours while the shorthand still means something. Circulate within a few days — minutes that arrive the day before the next meeting have failed at their main job, which is prompting people to do the actions.

Mark the status: Draft until approved at the next meeting, then Approved. Corrections are made at that meeting and recorded, not by quietly editing the file.

Keep an action log that carries forward across meetings, with an owner and a due date and a status. This is what makes a series of meetings productive rather than a series of conversations.

Common mistakes

Minuting the discussion and not the decision. Actions with no named owner or no date. Writing them a fortnight later. Recording who said what in a contested item, turning the minutes into evidence in a dispute. Editing approved minutes. Using acronyms nobody will remember. Sending them to a distribution list that includes people who should not see a confidential item.

Practical tips

• Put actions in a table at the end as well as inline. People scroll to the table.
• Bold the word Action so it is scannable.
• Use the same numbering as the agenda so items can be cross-referenced.
• If a decision was fudged, minute what was actually agreed rather than what you assume was meant — the ambiguity is information the chair needs.