Definition
To note a bill is the act of a notary public who makes a brief formal minute on or attached to a dishonored bill of exchange recording the fact of presentment and non-payment. The minute — called the "noting" — typically records the notary's initials, the date, and the reason given (if any) for non-payment. Noting is a preliminary step that precedes and preserves the right to formal protest of the bill.
The act functions as an official record that the holder has done what is required: presented the instrument, demanded payment or acceptance, and been refused. It is the notary's contemporaneous memorandum of that refusal, made on the day of dishonor or re-presentment.
Common Confusion
"Noting" and "protest" are related but distinct acts. Noting is the informal preliminary minute — quick, made on the day of dishonor. Protest is the formal notarial certificate that follows, often completed later, which attests to noting and dishonor in full legal form. A protest usually incorporates or refers back to the noting. In some jurisdictions and under some instruments, noting alone was sufficient to preserve rights; in others, full protest was required. Researchers should not treat these terms as interchangeable when reading historical commercial documents or pleadings.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of historical commercial law practice that appears almost exclusively in sources dealing with bills of exchange and foreign commercial paper from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Several research traps exist.
First, the term is closely tied to the law merchant and pre-UCC commercial practice. After the Uniform Commercial Code displaced earlier negotiable instruments law across American jurisdictions in the mid-twentieth century, formal noting requirements largely fell away or were substantially relaxed. Researchers consulting historical cases or treatises will encounter noting as a technical prerequisite to recovery on a dishonored foreign bill; that same technical requirement does not map directly onto modern UCC-governed instruments.
Second, the distinction between "foreign" and "inland" bills matters here. Historical sources, including both Black's and Bouvier's, associate noting primarily with foreign bills — those drawn in one country or jurisdiction and payable in another. Inland bills were typically subject to different (sometimes lesser) formal requirements. A researcher reading a historical case must first determine the character of the instrument before the noting rules become intelligible.
Third, noting appears in admiralty and maritime commercial contexts with some frequency, given the international character of shipping finance and trade paper. Researchers working in the Law Mind Military, Veterans & Admiralty corpus or in historical commercial law should be alert to noting as a term of art in those materials.
Fourth, the notarial minute created by noting was evidence of dishonor. Its absence — or a defect in the noting — could defeat an action against endorsers or drawers who were entitled to notice. The procedural stakes explain why historical pleadings and reported cases treat noting with such precision.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's are in close agreement here, nearly word for word. Both describe the same procedure: re-presentment by the notary on the day of dishonor, followed by a minute of the notary's initials, date, and reason for non-payment if given. Black's cites Wharton as authority. Neither source treats "noting" as a term with significant variation or controversy — it is a settled term of commercial practice, not a contested legal concept.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the relationship between noting and the subsequent formal protest, the evidentiary weight of the noting minute in litigation, or the effect of noting requirements on endorsers versus drawers. Researchers who need those details will need to move from the dictionary definitions to treatises on bills of exchange — Chitty on Bills, Byles on Bills, or early editions of Daniel on Negotiable Instruments are the natural next stops for period-accurate treatment.
Neither dictionary addresses the displacement of these requirements by uniform negotiable instruments legislation (the NIL, and later the UCC), which is the most important development for any researcher trying to connect historical doctrine to modern law.
Jurisdictional Note
Noting requirements historically varied between jurisdictions following the law merchant and those with codified commercial statutes. In the United States, the Negotiable Instruments Law and then the UCC progressively simplified or eliminated formal noting as a condition of liability. In England and some Commonwealth jurisdictions, noting retained distinct procedural significance longer and may still appear in contexts involving international bills.