Commonplace book: what it is and how to start one
A commonplace book is a notebook of things worth keeping: quotes, facts, recipes, cuttings. Entries go under subject headings rather than dates, with an index at the back to find them again.
Start with 40 pages free. No card needed.
Erasmus, Milton, Newton and Virginia Woolf kept one, and students at Oxford were once taught to. It sits between a diary and a scrapbook.
The table shows how it differs from the books it is usually confused with.
See also: what a junk journal is, a scrapbook journal, how to keep newspaper cuttings, what scrapbooking is.
Make a digital scrapbook
Add your photos and keepsakes in tbf scrapbook, then arrange them on the pages. Make a commonplace book online.
| Book | Organised by | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| Commonplace book | Subject, with an index | Quotes, facts, ideas, recipes and cuttings you want to find again |
| Diary or journal | Date | What happened and what you made of it |
| Scrapbook | Event or theme | Photos and keepsakes arranged on pages |
| Junk journal | Whatever the paper suggests | Found paper, ephemera and short notes |
Locke's method
John Locke wrote his method in French in 1685; it came out in English in 1706 as A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books. Its core still works: a heading per subject and an index.
Choosing headings
Start with five or six subjects you already collect, such as food, work, books, places and words. Add a new heading when a subject turns up twice, not before.
Cuttings and recipes
Recipes, letters and poems have gone into commonplace books for centuries, and a newspaper cutting fits the same way. Glue it on one side of the page only, and date it.
Steps
Number the pages
Number every page before the first entry, so the index can point to them.
Keep the back for an index
Leave the last six pages blank and write the alphabet down their edges.
One entry, one heading
Copy the quote or fact, note where it came from and write its subject at the top.
Index as you go
Add each new heading and its page number to the index the day you write it.
Questions
What do you put in a commonplace book?
Anything you want to find again: quotes, facts, recipes, lists, cuttings and ideas from books and conversations, each with where it came from.
Is a commonplace book the same as a journal?
No. A journal runs by date and records your days. A commonplace book runs by subject and collects what you read and hear.
Can I keep a commonplace book digitally?
Yes. Tags do the work of headings and search does the work of the index. Photograph handwritten pages to keep both in one place.