Commonplace book

A notebook of things worth keeping (quotes, facts, ideas, recipes, lines overheard), sorted under headings so you can find them again. The tradition runs more than 2,000 years, from Greek and Roman rhetoric through Renaissance schools, John Locke's index and Thomas Jefferson's notebooks, to index cards, Octavia Butler's notebooks and today's digital notes.

Research checked 2026-09-28. Uncertain points are marked.

1. At a glance

2. Summary

A commonplace book is a personal collection of passages and ideas worth keeping, copied by hand (or typed) under headings ("heads") and made findable with an index. The name comes from the Latin loci communes, the "common places" or stock topics a speaker could draw arguments from. Renaissance schools trained students to read with a notebook open, copy useful passages under heads like Gratitude or Death, and reuse them in their own writing. John Locke published a compact two-page index that let any book work this way, and printers later sold blank books ruled to his method. Jefferson, Milton, Emerson, Woolf, Octavia Butler and many others kept them. Modern versions include Ryan Holiday's 4×6 notecard box and digital notes apps; Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten is a close cousin that links notes to each other instead of filing them under topics. Unlike a diary, a commonplace book is organised by subject, not date. So it pairs well with a daily journal: the day page catches the line, and the commonplace book is where the line goes to live.

3. History and origin

Classical roots

• Aristotle (4th c. BCE): Topics and Rhetoric treat topoi, "places" where arguments can be found.
• Cicero (1st c. BCE): Topica and De Oratore carry this into oratory as loci communes. Speakers keep sententiae, wise sayings from philosophers, statesmen and poets.
• Seneca (1st c. CE), Letters to Lucilius 84: "We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey." He says to "sift whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading" and blend it into something that "betrays its origin" but is "clearly a different thing." This is the core idea: gather, then digest.
• Aulus Gellius (2nd c. CE), Attic Nights: a miscellany of notes from reading, often named as a model for the genre.

Medieval

• Florilegia ("gatherings of flowers"), by the 8th century: collections of excerpts from scripture and the Church Fathers, arranged by theme.
• Zibaldone (late medieval Italy): household "hodgepodge" books mixing taxes, exchange rates, remedies, recipes and favourite lines from Augustine and Virgil.
• Robert Darnton (NYRB, 2000) dates commonplacing as a practice to "probably" the twelfth century and says it lasted among the Victorians.

Renaissance schools

• Erasmus, De duplici copia verborum ac rerum (De Copia), first printed 1512 by Josse Bade in Paris:
  • a rhetoric textbook on "abundant style": how to vary and enrich writing;
  • at least 85 editions in Erasmus's lifetime (Wikipedia);
  • part of it advises collecting examples under organised heads so a student always has material. Wikipedia's commonplace book article gives the example of Piety subdivided into Gratitude.
  • Some popular sources give larger edition counts (150 in six decades). Not verified here.
• Printed commonplace books: Ann Moss (Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought, Clarendon Press, 1996) shows that humanist schools trained pupils to keep these from their first Latin onward. Printed ready-made collections shaped how people sorted moral philosophy and argument.
• Leonardo da Vinci called his notebook "a collection without order, drawn from many papers… hoping to arrange them later each in its place, according to the subjects."
• Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton: Milton's commonplace book has page citations he used when writing tracts and poems (Wikipedia; Darnton).

Locke's New Method (1685–1706)

• John Locke (1632–1704) used his method for about 25 years before publishing it.
• He wrote it as a letter to the French scholar Nicolas Toinard ("Mr. Toignard" in the English text). The Clarendon Edition of Locke's works dates the letter 1685.
• Publication history:
  • It was published anonymously in French as "Méthode nouvelle de dresser des recueils" in Jean Le Clerc's Bibliothèque universelle et historique (Amsterdam), vol. 2, July 1686.
  • It appeared in English in Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke (London, 1706), "Translated out of French from the Second Volume of the Bibliotheque Universelle."
  • Stand-alone English printings followed. Archive.org holds a 1706 J. Greenwood edition.
  • Some secondary sources say "1685" for the French publication. The primary edition shows 1685 is the letter and 1686 the journal. Public Domain Review's "1685" refers to the letter.
• Legacy: printers sold blank books pre-ruled to his system. Erasmus Darwin and Charles Darwin used Bell's Common-Place Book, Formed generally upon the Principles Recommended and Practised by Mr Locke.
• How the method works is in section 5.

Thomas Jefferson (1758 onward)

• Jefferson kept three commonplace books he thought worth binding properly (Princeton University Press, Legal Commonplace Book introduction):
  • Literary Commonplace Book: begun "as early as 1758" at Rev. James Maury's school. 407 passages, most entered between ages 15 and 30. Library of Congress. Edited by Douglas L. Wilson (Princeton, 1989); the only earlier edition was 1928.
  • Legal Commonplace Book: begun 1765–66. 905 entries on about 315 quarto pages. Kept into the 1820s and includes philosophy and history as well as law. Library of Congress.
  • Equity Commonplace Book: a spin-off of the legal one, with 2,018 entries. Huntington Library. Unpublished.
• Wilson argues the literary one was "a deeply personal notebook with direct connections to the emotional events and preoccupations of his formative years."

18th and 19th centuries

• Carl Linnaeus used commonplacing methods while building the naming system of Systema Naturae (Wikipedia).
• Emerson and Thoreau learned commonplacing at Harvard (Wikipedia).
• Commonplace books slowly blur into scrapbooks, album books and "friendship albums."

20th century

• Virginia Woolf kept 67 volumes of reading notes: for reviews, essays, biographies, background for novels, and her own interest. Brenda Silver described and dated them in Virginia Woolf's Reading Notebooks (Princeton, 1983), now free from Dartmouth.
• Twain, Coleridge, Woolf kept messy reading notes mixed with other material; Thomas Hardy kept formal ones (Wikipedia).
• Geoffrey Madan's notebooks used playful headings like "Viniana" and "Beauty, Point, and Charm" (Darnton).
• Ronald Reagan kept index cards in a photo album, published as The Notes (2011).
• Octavia E. Butler kept many commonplace books, now at the Huntington Library. The finding aid says they hold "working notes for novels and short stories, research, journal entries, notes on daily life and activities, and more." It also says "very little of the contents of the commonplace books are indexed." Her notebooks also hold self-directed affirmations, like "So be it! See to it!" written inside a notebook cover in 1988 (Art Papers, drawing on an essay by Natalie Russell). They mix commonplace and diary freely, which is the model most useful for Journalwright Studio.

Digital era

• Steven Johnson, "The Glass Box and the Commonplace Book" (Hearst New Media lecture, Columbia, April 2010): links Enlightenment commonplace books to the linked web and argues that open, connected text makes the whole system more productive.
• Ryan Holiday:
  • "How And Why To Keep A 'Commonplace Book'" (24 Jan 2014);
  • "The Notecard System" (1 Apr 2014), an index-card method he learned from Robert Greene.
• Zettelkasten revival: Niklas Luhmann's slip box (about 90,000 notes, 1951–1996) went online at the Niklas Luhmann-Archiv from 2019. His 1981 essay "Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen" is translated as "Communicating with Slip Boxes." Personal knowledge management (PKM) apps borrow from both traditions.

Cultural context

• Commonplacing was a response to "too much to know." Ann Blair (Too Much to Know, Yale, 2010) shows information overload is centuries old, and that early modern scholars built note systems to cope with the flood of printed books.
• Darnton's summary of the mindset: "Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things."
• Darnton on the result: "Commonplacing was like quilting: it produced pictures, some more beautiful than others, but each of them interesting in its own way."

Key quotes

• Locke: "I take a Paper Book of what size I please. I divide the two first Pages that face one another by parallel Lines into five and twenty equal parts."
• Locke, on why two facing pages per class: "the Heads of the Class appear all at once, without the trouble of turning over a Leaf."
• Locke, on modesty: he "esteem'd it so mean a thing as not to deserve publishing in an Age so full of useful Inventions."
• Seneca: blend what you gather into "one delicious compound."
• Holiday, quoting Raymond Chandler: "When you have to use your energy to put those words down, you are more apt to make them count."

4. Philosophy and principles

• Gather, then digest (Seneca). Copying is not the goal. You collect so you can blend what you find into your own thinking.
• Organise by subject, not date. A diary asks "when?"; a commonplace book asks "about what?"
• Retrieval is the point. Locke's whole contribution is an index. A note you can't find is lost.
• Write it by hand, slowly. Humanists copied to learn; Holiday argues the effort makes you choose better. (Evidence is mixed; see section 16.)
• Wait before you keep. Holiday waits one to a few weeks after finishing a book before transferring notes, so only what still matters survives.
• Keep sources. Locke insists on author, title, edition, place, date and total page count so you can find the passage in any edition.
• It's yours. Darnton: each one is a quilt of a reader's mind. Jefferson's reads like a private emotional record.

The problem it solves: You read or hear something that matters, and a month later it's gone. The commonplace book keeps it, and the index lets you find it when you need it: for writing, for a hard day, for a talk.

5. Core components

5.1 Entry

• Can be:
  • a quote (short is better);
  • a fact or statistic with its source;
  • your own idea;
  • something overheard;
  • a recipe, remedy or instruction;
  • a pasted clipping;
  • a small drawing.
• One entry, one point. If a passage makes two points, file it twice or split it.

5.2 Heads

• Locke: each head should be "some important and essential Word to the matter in hand."
• Use nouns in one form. Locke preferred Latin nominatives so spellings don't drift, and said to never mix languages in heads.
• Examples: Rest, Courage, Body, Work, Names, Home, Weather, Kindness, Anger, Transition.
• Keep heads few at first. Holiday: categories should emerge as you go.

5.3 Locke's index, step by step

From the 1706 English text:

1. Rule the index. Take a blank book of any size. On the first two facing pages, rule 25 equal horizontal lines. Make every fifth line dark. Add vertical lines to form columns.
2. Letters and vowels. Use 20 letters: drop K, Y and W (C, I and U cover them). Q always takes U, so it goes in the fifth slot under Z. Against each letter, list the five vowels A E I O U. That makes 100 "classes."
3. Margin. Leave a margin on every other page, about an inch in a folio book, less in a small one.
4. Pick a head. For a note on letters, the head is Epistola. Its first letter is E, and the first vowel after it is I. So its class is E-i.
5. Look it up.
   • If E-i has a page number: go there and write under the head.
   • If E-i is empty: find the first unused left-hand page (the back of a leaf). Write its number in the E-i cell. Write the head in large letters starting in the margin, then the entry.
   • From then on, that left page and the right page facing it belong to class E-i. Every head in the class goes there (Episcopus, Edictum, Efficacia).
6. Only the head goes in the margin. Keep the text on the line so heads stand out.
7. When the two pages fill:
   • If the next left page is free, write "V" (turn over) at the bottom and top.
   • If not, write the number of the next free left page at the bottom, and at the top of the new page write the number of the page you came from. Put the new number in the index too.
8. Vowel-first words. If the head is one syllable and starts with a vowel, that vowel is both letter and vowel: Ars goes in A-a, Os in O-o.
9. Use leftover right-hand pages. When all the left pages are used, give blank right pages to new classes.
10. Growing it. Adding a second vowel gives 500 classes, but Locke preferred 100, and ideally one book per subject.
11. Citing sources.
    • Before copying from a book, write the author as a head, then the title, size, place and date of edition, and the total number of pages.
    • Afterwards, cite a passage by writing its page number above the total page count (259 over 626).
    • Locke's reason: by "the Rule of Three" you can estimate where the passage sits in any other edition.

Why it works: a two-page index fixed at the start covers a book of any size. Classes grow wherever there's space. Cross-references stitch spread-out pages together "as if they were pasted together."

5.4 Alphabetical back index (simpler modern way)

• Number every page. Keep the last 4–6 pages as an A–Z index.
• Write each head once in the index with the pages where it appears. Add page numbers as the head recurs.
• Lighter than Locke, and easy for anyone who has used a book index.

5.5 Source line

• Minimum: who said it, where (title), and page or date.
• For something overheard: who, where, when ("bus driver, route 25, Oct").
• Holiday circles the first quotation mark so he never mistakes a quote for his own words.

5.6 Commentary

• A line or two in your own words under the quote: why it matters, what it connects to, whether you agree. This is Seneca's "digest" step and what separates a commonplace book from a quote list.

5.7 Cards and boxes (Holiday / Greene)

• 4×6 ruled cards. One idea per card.
• Theme written in the top right corner. Cards stored by theme in an index card box.
• Duplicate cards for cards that fit two themes. Mark "→" if the card continues on the back.
• Cards can be shuffled and laid out on a table to plan writing. This is the main advantage over a bound book.

5.8 Transfer session

• Holiday: mark passages while reading (fold corners, underline, margin notes). After finishing, wait about one to a few weeks (his two posts say "a week" and "2–3 weeks"). Then transfer what still stands out.
• The same works with a daily journal: mark lines during the week, transfer at the weekly review.

5.9 Review

• Reread a head at random, or the whole book once a year. Holiday shuffles through his cards for projects and inspiration.

6. Setting it up

First setup (30–60 min)

1. Pick the container.
   • A bound notebook (A5 or 5.5×8.5, numbered pages ideal) if you like one object.
   • 4×6 cards and a box if you like to rearrange.
   • An app if you need search and don't want to write by hand.
2. Number pages (if not pre-numbered).
3. Choose an index.
   • Easiest: last 4–6 pages as an A–Z index.
   • Classic: Locke's two-page grid at the front (see 9.1).
   • Cards: alphabetical dividers in the box.
4. Pick 5–10 starter heads.
   • Suggested: Rest, Courage, Body, Work, People, Home, Nature, Words, Money, Me.
   • Don't create more until something needs a home.
5. Write a key on the inside cover:
   • " quote, ! fact, * my idea, ~ overheard;
   • → see also, V continued.
6. Put one entry in right now. Something you already know by heart. Empty books are harder to start.

First day

• Carry the day journal as usual. When a line catches you (book, song, conversation, sign), write it on the day page with a mark ("), or flag the book page.

First week

• Days 1–6: just mark. Don't transfer yet.
• Day 7 (15–30 min): read back through the week's marks. Transfer the ones that still matter, each under a head, with a source and one line of your own.
• Make a head only when an entry needs it. Add it to the index.

7. Daily practice

Order of operations for one entry

1. Choose the head (one noun).
2. Find its page via the index (make one if new).
3. Write the head in the margin.
4. Copy the entry exactly. Use quotation marks.
5. Add the source.
6. Add one line in your own words.
7. If new, update the index.

Prompts

• What line from today do I want to still have in a year?
• Why did this stick?
• Where else have I seen this idea?
• Do I agree? What would I change?
• What head does it go under, and what else is there?

8. Rhythms

9. Page anatomy

9.1 Locke index (first two facing pages)

Locke rules each of the two facing pages into 25 rows (every fifth line dark) and adds vertical lines "from the top to the bottom." Each block of five rows gets one letter, with the five vowels down its rows. 20 letters × 5 vowels = 100 cells = 50 rows, so each page carries two columns of five letters. Left page shown:

+---------------------------+---------------------------+
| A  a |                    | F  a |                    |
|    e | 4  (Adversaria)    |    e |                    |
|    i |                    |    i |                    |
|    o |                    |    o |                    |
|    u |                    |    u |                    |
|======+====================|======+====================|  <- dark line
| B  a |                    | G  a |                    |
|    e | 10                 |    e |                    |
|  ...                      |  ...                      |
|======+====================|======+====================|
| C ...                     | H ...                     |
| D ...                     | I ...                     |
|======+====================|======+====================|
| E  a |                    | L  a |                    |
|    e |                    |    e |                    |
|    i | 2  (Epistola)      |    i |                    |
|    o |                    |    o |                    |
|    u |                    |    u |                    |
+---------------------------+---------------------------+
  Right page: M N O P R | S T U X Z  (Qu goes in Z's fifth row).
  K, Y, W are left out (C, I, U stand in for them).

The two-columns-per-page split and the letter order are inferred from the arithmetic and the text ("as you may see in the Table prefixed"). Check a scan of the printed table before reproducing it.

9.2 Locke body pages (a class spread)

+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
|margin|  (left page = p.2)      |margin|  (right page = p.3)     |
|~1 in |                         |      |                         |
|EPISTOLA  A letter from ...     |EBIONITAE  In eorum ...         |
|      ...                       |      ...                       |
|EDICTUM  ...                    |                          V --> |
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
  Only the head sits in the margin. One class = one facing pair.
  "V" at foot = continued overleaf; or a page number if it jumps.

9.3 Modern notebook page (back index)

+------------------------------------------+
| p.37                          head: REST |
|------------------------------------------|
| "  Rest is not idleness..."              |
|    — J. Lubbock, The Use of Life (1894)  |
|    * the bench after shift counts.       |
|                                          |
| ~  "You don't have to earn a nap."       |
|    — coworker, break room, 3 Oct         |
|    * said kindly. Keep.                  |
|                                          |
| → see also: BODY p.12, WORK p.40         |
+------------------------------------------+

• Ruling: lined or dot grid. Head top right (Holiday-style) or in the left margin (Locke-style).
• Space: about 3–6 entries per A5 page.
• Lubbock example: the line is widely quoted from Sir John Lubbock, The Use of Life (1894), chapter on recreation. The wording in quote sites varies slightly. Check the original before printing it anywhere.

9.4 Back index page

+------------------------------------------+
| INDEX                                    |
| A  Anger 22 · Asking 51                  |
| B  Body 12, 30, 44 · Bus 18              |
| C  Courage 9, 27 · Care 33               |
| ...                                      |
| R  Rest 37, 58 · Rain 19                 |
| W  Work 40 · Words 5, 6, 61              |
+------------------------------------------+

9.5 Holiday-style 4×6 card

+----------------------------------------------+
|                                   COURAGE    |  <- theme, top right
| ("The cave you fear to enter holds the       |  <- first quote mark circled
|   treasure you seek."                        |
|   — often attributed to Joseph Campbell;     |
|     source unverified                        |
|                                              |
| * Makes me think of the endo appointment.    |
|                                          →   |  <- continues on back
+----------------------------------------------+

This card's quote is a common misattribution risk. The example shows why the source line matters: write "unverified" when you can't confirm.

9.6 Day-page "Words to keep" feeder

+------------------------------------------+
| WORDS TO KEEP           head: [________] |
| "_______________________________________ |
|  _______________________________________"|
|  who / where: __________________________ |
|  why: __________________________________ |
|  [ ] moved to commonplace                |
+------------------------------------------+

10. Worked examples

10.1 A day (feeder on the day page)

TUE 13 OCT
Words to keep                          head: WORK
"Do the next right thing."
 — heard on a podcast at lunch (name? check)
 why: when the shift gets loud, this is small enough.
 [ ] moved

10.2 A week's transfer session (Sunday, 20 min)

Marked this week:

1. Tue: "Do the next right thing." (podcast, check name)
2. Wed: a line from a library book on birds: herons stand still for long stretches before striking (p. 88)
3. Thu: sign at the clinic: "Your name is the name you tell us."
4. Fri: my own thought: shifts feel shorter when I name the three breaks at clock-in
5. Sat: recipe: lentils, onion, cumin, 25 min

Kept:

• 1 → WORK p.40. Source line: "podcast, unknown; find."
• 2 → NATURE p.19, with the note "* be the heron at the ditch."
• 3 → NAMES p.8 (new head, added to index N-a / back index N).
• 4 → WORK p.40 as * (own idea).
• 5 → not commonplace. Goes to a recipe collection.

Index updated: NAMES 8.

10.3 A month

• Transfers: 4 sessions, 17 entries kept of 29 marked.
• Heads grown: WORK (+6), REST (+4), NAMES (+3), NATURE (+2), COURAGE (+2).
• Merged: "Calm" into REST.
• See-alsos added: REST ↔ BODY.
• Reread: all of REST (9 entries). Wrote one line on the month page: "Most of what I kept this month is permission to stop."

11. Variations and offshoots

12. Community practice

• What people do now:
  • Most modern keepers use a plain notebook with a back index or tags, or an app.
  • Few use Locke's grid. It's admired and sometimes tried, and many report dropping it for an A–Z index.
  • Holiday's posts made the index-card box popular among writers.
• Common customisations:
  • colour-coded tabs per head;
  • a key of symbols (quote, fact, own idea);
  • a "to transfer" pocket;
  • pasted clippings;
  • one notebook per year;
  • one "commonplace" section at the back of a bullet journal.
• Aesthetic camp:
  • calligraphy headings;
  • ephemera (tickets, pressed leaves);
  • vintage-style notebooks;
  • aesthetic flat-lays on Instagram and Pinterest.
• Minimalist camp:
  • one pen, no decoration;
  • strict one-idea-per-entry;
  • an index and nothing else;
  • often digital.
• Arguments people have:
  • Hand vs digital.
  • Quotes vs own words (the Zettelkasten crowd pushes for own words).
  • Topic heads vs tags vs links.
  • Whether to reread at all.

13. Official products and formats

Not applicable in the sense of an official product. Historical and current options:

• Historical: pre-ruled Locke blanks such as Bell's Common-Place Book (18th–19th c.).
• Now: various "commonplace book" notebooks from stationers (lined, sometimes with index pages); index-card boxes (Holiday mentions Vaultz and Cropper Hopper boxes); none are standard.
• Facsimiles and editions:
  • Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book (Princeton, 1989; reissued);
  • Silver's Virginia Woolf's Reading Notebooks (Princeton 1983; free from Dartmouth);
  • Reagan's The Notes (2011).

14. Tools and supplies

15. Digital and hybrid versions

• Apps:
  • Plain notes apps with tags.
  • Outliners.
  • Linked-note apps (Obsidian, Logseq and similar), which make Zettelkasten-style links easy.
  • Read-it-later and highlight tools that export highlights.
  • Readwise-style services that resurface highlights (the spaced review of a commonplace book, automated).
• Templates: printable Locke grids, card templates, A–Z index pages.
• E-ink:
  • reMarkable, Kindle Scribe and Boox can hold a notebook with an index page and hyperlinked heads. Handwriting search varies by device.
  • Kindle highlights and notes export as text: a fast feeder, but no digestion step.
• Scanning:
  • Scan index pages first.
  • Card systems scan well one card per image.
  • OCR on handwriting is patchy.
• Gained digitally: search, tags, links, backups, copy-paste accuracy, no page limits.
• Lost digitally:
  • The slow copy that forces you to choose. Copy-paste makes hoarding easy.
  • The physical shuffle of cards.
  • A single object you can hand down.
  • Some people find screens raise stimulation.
• Hybrid: mark on paper, transfer weekly to digital, or collect digitally and hand-copy only the best into a paper book.

16. Evidence and research

No study tests "keeping a commonplace book" as a whole. The evidence is about parts of it.

Claimed vs supported:

17. Benefits

• A findable store of words and ideas that matter to you. (Claimed, true by design)
• Better memory for material you respond to in your own words. (Evidenced in lab settings, generation effect)
• Slows reading down and makes you choose. (Claimed)
• Source for writing, talks, letters. (Historical practice; claimed)
• A record of who you were: what you chose to keep shows what mattered (Jefferson, Butler). (Claimed)
• Comfort on hard days: a head like REST or COURAGE is a ready-made pep talk in words you chose. (Claimed)
• Cheap and portable. (True)
• Handwritten notes help conceptual learning. (Mixed evidence; don't rely on it)

18. Pitfalls

19. Accessibility and adaptations

20. Comparison

• vs Zettelkasten: Luhmann's slip box uses fixed numbers, branches and links. Its keyword register is a sparse index into a web. It's meant as a thinking partner that surprises you. A commonplace book files by topic and is more about keeping than generating. Many modern PKM systems are hybrids.
• vs diary: A diary is time-ordered and about you. A commonplace book is subject-ordered and mostly about what you took in. Octavia Butler's books show they can merge.
• vs bullet journal collections: a BuJo collection is a topic page found by the index, which is a light commonplace. BuJo's index plays the role of Locke's.

21. Combining

• With a daily journal (Journalwright Studio day pages): the strongest pairing. The day page catches lines as they happen ("Words to keep"). The weekly review moves them into the commonplace section under heads. The day page stays about when, and the commonplace about what.
• Bullet Journal (bullet-journal.md, sibling doc): use collections as commonplace heads and the BuJo index as the index.
• Dutch door (dutch-door-method.md): the rest spreads between Dutch door sets are a natural home for a "Quotes and words to keep" collection.
• Stoic journaling (stoic-journaling.md): Marcus Aurelius and Seneca are classic commonplace sources, and Seneca's bee letter is the tradition's motto. A Stoic evening review can end with one line to keep.
• Progoff Intensive Journal (progoff-intensive-journal.md): its sections are a kind of subject-head system for your own life.
• Expressive writing (expressive-writing.md): keep expressive writing private and separate. Only a line you want to carry forward goes in the commonplace.
• Dream journal (dream-journal.md): a DREAMS head for recurring images.
• CBT thought record (cbt-thought-record.md): balanced thoughts that worked can be kept under a head like REFRAMES.
• Getting Things Done on paper (getting-things-done-paper.md): GTD's reference file is a commonplace book for practical info.

Sibling files are written in parallel. If a link breaks, the index in docs/journaling/ is the source of truth.

22. Ready-to-use bank

Starter heads:

1. REST
2. COURAGE
3. BODY
4. WORK
5. NAMES (words that fit me)
6. HOME
7. NATURE / WEATHER
8. PEOPLE (things people said)
9. MONEY (practical wisdom)
10. CARE (what helps when I'm low)
11. MAKING (writing, art, craft)
12. QUESTIONS (things I want to find out)

Entry prompts:

1. What line from today do I want to have in a year?
2. Why did it stick?
3. Where have I met this idea before?
4. Do I agree? What would I add?
5. Who would I share this with?
6. What does this let me stop doing?

Collection ideas:

1. Things strangers said that were kind
2. Lines from songs that got me through a shift
3. Facts about local birds and weather
4. Words for feelings I didn't have words for
5. Recipes that take under 20 minutes
6. Advice I'd give myself last year
7. Moments I felt like me (quoted from day pages)
8. Book lines on rest and slowness
9. Community wisdom (elders, forums, support groups)

Symbols:

1. " quote
2. ! fact
3. * own idea
4. ~ overheard
5. → see also
6. V continued overleaf (Locke)
7. ? source unverified

23. Glossary

24. FAQ

Is a commonplace book a diary? No. A diary is ordered by date; a commonplace book by subject. Many people (Butler, Leopardi) mix them, and that's fine.

Do I have to use Locke's index? No. An A–Z back index works. Locke's method is clever for bound books because the two-page index never runs out of room. Try it once if you're curious.

Paper or digital? Either. Handwriting forces you to choose and may help you digest. The 2014 "handwriting wins" study didn't reliably replicate. Digital wins on search. Many people capture digitally and keep the best on paper.

How long should entries be? Short. One idea. If it's long, copy the key sentence and note the page.

Should I write my own thoughts or only quotes? Both. A line of your own under each quote is what makes it yours (Seneca's digesting). Zettelkasten goes further: mostly your own words.

How many heads? Start with 5–10. Add a head only when an entry needs one. Merge often.

How often should I reread? Weekly for new entries, monthly for one or two heads, yearly for the whole book.

What's the difference from Zettelkasten? Commonplace: filed by topic, many quotes, for keeping. Zettelkasten: numbered and linked notes, your own ideas, for generating new work.

Can I keep one inside my bullet journal or day planner? Yes. Use a section at the back or collection pages, and index them. The Studio's "Words to keep" preset is a daily feeder for this.

Is it okay to include recipes, lists, and practical info? Yes. The Italian zibaldone and many household books mixed recipes and remedies with poetry.

25. For Journalwright Studio

Journalwright Studio already has a "Words to keep" preset and a keep block on day pages (with an optional source line and a "moved" box), and an "A month ago today" look-back block. That is the capture step. What's still planned is the home: somewhere entries go under heads, with an index.

a. Printed book

b. E-ink companion (X4)

c. Proposed editor blocks

Back-matter blocks are not day-page blocks today. commonplace and cpindex would need the book renderer, not only the day page editor. Flagged for the method-layout unit.

d. Proposed method layout ("Commonplace day")

A day page for reading and collecting days:

1. sky
2. events
3. top (label "Today", n 3)
4. body (Writing space, lines)
5. keep (lines 2, head on, moved on, source on)
6. good (n 2)
7. review (items: well, tomorrow)

The keep block already exists (without the head blank), so this layout can be built by hand in the editor today. It is not yet in the "Start from a method" list.

e. Don't adopt

• A full Locke grid on every book. Too fussy and dense for calm design. Offer an A–Z index; mention Locke in the Keeper only.
• Quote-of-the-day feeds from outside sources on the e-ink companion. That's a feed. Only the user's own kept lines.
• Auto-generated summaries or "insights" from a person's entries. No generative AI.
• Streaks or counts of lines kept. Invites hoarding and guilt.
• Decorative ephemera pages. Busy, and they break scan zones.

26. Open questions

• The exact layout of Locke's printed index table (columns per page, letter order). The text gives the rules; a scan of the 1706 table should be checked before drawing it.
• How many editions De Copia had in total. Wikipedia says at least 85 in Erasmus's lifetime; popular sites say 150 in six decades. Not settled here.
• Whether handwriting helps retention beyond making you select and paraphrase. The 2019 replication leaves it open.
• No study tests commonplace books directly for wellbeing or memory. A small study of "words to keep" plus weekly rereading would be useful.
• How Octavia Butler indexed (or didn't) across her notebooks. The finding aid says little is indexed. Scholarship on her notebooks may say more.

27. Further reading

• John Locke, "A New Method of a Common-Place-Book" (1686; English 1706). Short and readable; the method in his words.
• Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, Letter 84. The bee metaphor, the tradition's core idea.
• Erasmus, De Copia (1512). The school method behind the Renaissance habit.
• Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (1996). The scholarly history.
• Ann Blair, Too Much to Know (2010). How scholars managed information overload before computers.
• Robert Darnton, "Extraordinary Commonplaces" (NYRB, 2000). A short essay on reading as quilting.
• Douglas L. Wilson (ed.), Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book (1989). A real one, annotated.
• Brenda Silver, Virginia Woolf's Reading Notebooks (1983). Free online; how a novelist read.
• Ryan Holiday, "The Notecard System" (2014). The modern card method, step by step.
• Niklas Luhmann, "Communicating with Slip Boxes" (1981). The Zettelkasten founder's own account.
• Steven Johnson, "The Glass Box and the Commonplace Book" (2010). Commonplacing and the web.

28. Sources

All opened 2026-09-28.