The phrase "a mere note" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to downplay the significance of a note or message, suggesting that it is not important or substantial.
Example: "I received a mere note from her, stating that she would be late to the meeting."
Alternatives: "just a note" or "only a note".
The debt owed by Herodotus to Athenian tragedy, with its implacable trajectories from grandeur to abjection, has been much commented on by classicists, some of whom even attribute his evolution from a mere note-taker to a grand moralist of human affairs to the years spent in Athens, when he is said to have been a friend of Sophocles.
In this way, what had initially appeared to be a mere note-to-note plagiarism of Beethoven has eventually given way to a radically different continuation, one which invokes Schubert's own, idiosyncratic compositional style.
His lower leg threatens to become detached at the knee while revolving during ronds de jambe en l'air when he dances at full speed, but he could also radiate imperious authority with a mere gesture (note how he extends his hand to Ms. Aldous in their wedding pas de deux).
And in fact, that "three-year itch" was a mere side note in its rich findings.
The objective is to have these methodologies incorporated into the way the IAPH conducts its research, rather than remaining a mere side note.
A former European Commissioner who is planning to run for the presidency, Emma Bonino (at 58, a mere babe), notes that a stagnant economy increases intolerance towards new entrants.
On one page of "Extensions 3," he used a mere fifty-seven notes in forty bars, or fewer than two per bar.
He grabbed the set with a series of huge forehands, mere notes in a symphony of grunts and groundstrokes.
In poetry a metaphor may perform varied functions from the mere noting of a likeness to the evocation of a swarm of associations; it may exist as a minor beauty or it may be the central concept and controlling image of the poem.
"I have been to many summits," the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said afterward, but Lisbon was more "intimate, informal" and "a real exchange about the priorities" instead of mere note-reading — and he gave credit to Mr. Obama.
