The Commonplace is a public notebook — quotes, observations, and half-formed thoughts from my reading life. No practical advice. Free for everyone. The index lives here.
”…fundamentally the commonplace method is a system for collecting quotations and other bits of information for personal use” - Jillian Hess
A Commonplace practice produces a personal collection, in the past this has been books, scrapbooks and albums.
The specific unit of information or scraps might be thought of as an intermediate packets a term coined by Tiago Forte that refers to building blocks of information for future work such as essays, books, presentations etc. (for our purposes we’ll just call them notes)
The common place has been used to collect quotes, newspaper clippings and is the predecessor of more visual forms of scrapbooking. I’m particularly drawn to one Anna Jameson’s method of commonplacing where she wraps quotes with her own thoughts. Here is an example courtesy of Jillian M. Hess in ‘How Romantics And Victorians Organized Information.
I READ in the life of Garrick that, “about 1741, a taste for Shakespeare had lately been revived by the encouragement of some distinguished persons of tastes of both sexes; but especially by the ladies who formed themselves into a society, called the ‘Shakespeare Club.” There exist a Shakespeare Society at this present time, but I do not know that any ladies are members of it, or allowed to be so.
— Jameson, A Commonplace book of Thoughts
One of the core features of a commonplace practice is the index, which gives the creator or collector of the notes the ability to access their notes when they need them.
It’s also a difficult thing to keep updated. In this digital version, I’m going to attempt to keep an alphabetical index of links.
This Commonplace notes are free for everyone. Paid subscribers get a new 5-Day project every month. The first one introduces The Ten Minute Visual Journal Method, and it’s FREE
I have several of these, though I just call them notebooks. I categorize a notebook by general subject matter. For instance, I have one for art (quotes, idea, methodologies), one for writing, one for general interest, one for home and garden, etc. I do have a Commonplace one for quotes specifically, but little in it. And yes, indexing is tough in analog versions. The space shown in the photo is woefully inadequate. A half-page per letter is often not enough.
For a digital commonplace book I’ve found tags can be helpful. Then, instead of an index, you only need to keep an index of your tags.