Commonplace Book: How to Start One (With Examples)

What is a commonplace book?

The name comes from the Latin locus communis, a general heading a writer could return to for material on a subject. A commonplace book turns that idea into an object: a notebook of headings, filled over years, mostly in other people's words. Renaissance students were taught the method at school, and many kept the same book for decades.

The practice has come back because the problem it solves has gotten worse. Most people now save more text in a month than a seventeenth-century scholar read in a year, scattered across highlights, screenshots and open tabs, and almost none of it returns at a useful moment. A commonplace book is a deliberate bottleneck: you keep only what survives being copied out by hand, and you file it where you will find it again. That makes it different from a reading journal, which follows one book at a time, and from daily journal prompts, which start from your own life.

How is a commonplace book different from a journal?

Most people who keep a commonplace book also keep a diary, and the two feed each other. A passage copied in March explains a mood you write about in June. Reflective writing answers what happened to you; a commonplace book answers what other people have already worked out about it. The line blurs in practice. Famous diaries such as Samuel Pepys's are diaries first, while Marcus Aurelius's notebooks read closer to a commonplace book kept by a man writing to himself.

Who kept commonplace books?

What these books share is the shape of the work. The heads were chosen in advance, the passages copied by hand, the source recorded, and nobody tried to be comprehensive. For the philosophy behind the Aurelius notebooks, what Stoicism is covers the school he was quoting from, and Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism covers the man.

How do you start a commonplace book?

1. Pick one notebook and commit to it for 90 days. An A5 holds a full page of prose per entry; a pocket notebook travels and fills faster.
2. Reserve the first four pages for the index and number every page as you use it.
3. Write your keep rule on the inside cover: only passages I would want to read again in five years.
4. Copy the passage word for word, then write author, title, page and year underneath in the same shape every time.
5. Leave a third of the page blank under each entry for the response you write later.
6. Set a floor, not a target. One entry a week is 50 a year, a useful book after a decade.

The first month is about the capture habit rather than the collection, so the quality of entry one matters very little. If a blank notebook feels formal, start with one-sentence entries until the page stops being precious. Anyone already doing morning pages finds this easier, because the hand is used to writing without editing.

What should you put in a commonplace book?

• Passages from books. The obvious material, and still the bulk of most collections.
• Lines from film, television and podcasts. Note where you heard it and the date.
• Arguments you disagree with. A head that holds only agreement is a scrapbook. File the best case against you.
• Definitions and distinctions. A clean definition of a word you use loosely beats a paragraph of praise for it.
• Numbers, with their sources. A statistic without a citation is unusable later.
• Things people said to you. Conversation is the one source nobody else has a copy of.
• Letters and emails worth keeping. Copy the paragraph, note who sent it and when.
• Your own sentences. When a line comes out right in a draft, file it under its head.

What to leave out is the harder rule. Passages collected because they make you look like the sort of person who collects them fill a book you never return to. A workable test: if you cannot say what question the passage answers, leave it. The heads that earn their space for most people are work, attention, mortality and belief, territory also covered by existential journal prompts if you would rather write your own way in than collect.

How did John Locke index his?

1. Rule two facing pages at the front into 26 rows, one per letter, each row split into five columns for a, e, i, o and u.
2. Open a new head by writing it at the top of the first empty page in the book.
3. Find its cell: first letter of the head, then the first vowel after that letter. Grief goes to G-i, Work to W-o.
4. Write the page number into the cell before you write the entry. Skipping this step is how an index dies.
5. Enter the passage under the head with its source, and carry on down the page as more arrive.
6. When the page fills, continue on the next empty page and add its number to the same cell.
7. To find anything later, read the page numbers off the cell and turn to them.

The method survives because the index grows with the book instead of being planned up front. Twenty-six letters crossed with five vowels gives 130 cells, more heads than most people ever open, and a new one can be added any day without reorganizing. The digital equivalent is a tag, with the same failure mode: a tag used once is a note to nobody. Worked reflection examples show what a filled-in entry looks like in a different format.

Should you keep it on paper or digitally?

Hand-copying is slow, and the slowness is the argument for it. Writing out 80 words takes about two minutes longer than you would otherwise spend on the passage, and that extra time is the mechanism: you have to read the sentence closely enough to reproduce it.

Digital files win everywhere else: searchable, backed up, easy to capture from an e-reader, easy to paste out of. The common split runs both rails, with highlights piling up digitally during the week and the ones that still look good on Sunday copied by hand. Traditions that write alongside a fixed text, such as Bible journaling, work the same way, and a fixed-field format like the Stoic journal template gives the response half of an entry some structure.

What does a commonplace book entry look like?

Both entries took under five minutes and neither one is finished. Each response is dated, points at something specific, and cross-references another head, which is what makes a book searchable by thought rather than by author. When your responses keep landing on the same subject, it has outgrown the notebook and wants its own writing, which is where career change prompts or a set of deep journal prompts take over.

What does the research say about writing your own responses?

The broader picture is mixed, and honest reporting matters more here than a clean conclusion. Frattaroli's 2006 meta-analysis of 146 randomized studies found a small, statistically significant positive effect of expressive writing on well-being (r = .075). An earlier meta-analysis by Smyth, covering 13 studies, found a larger average effect (d = 0.47). A 2006 meta-analysis by Mogk and colleagues, covering 30 randomized trials, found no significant health effect at all (g = 0.04). Read together, the results point toward structure doing more work than sheer volume, which is an argument for the response half of an entry. A commonplace book is a thinking tool and no kind of treatment; CBT journaling covers the formats tested clinically.

How often should you reread it?

The monthly sweep takes half an hour. Pick one head, read every entry under it in order, and add one line connecting two of them. The annual read shows which heads grew and which stopped in February. Move entries that no longer earn their page to a back section instead of crossing them out; what you outgrew is worth keeping. Turning a passage into an action is the step most collections skip: pick one entry a month, write a dated action under it, and add the outcome beside it later. A daily reflection journal or a set of Stoic journal prompts gives that action half a daily container.

The Full Commonplace Book Practice Library

Starting: Choosing a format and your first entries

1. Pick one notebook and commit to it for 90 days before judging whether the format works. Write the start date on the inside cover.
2. Leave the first four pages blank for an index and write INDEX at the top of the first one so you do not fill it by accident.
3. Copy your first passage tonight from whatever you are already reading. Any passage will do; entry one exists to stop the notebook from being precious.
4. Write your keep rule on the inside cover in one sentence, for example: only passages I would want to read again in five years. Reread the rule before every transcription session.
5. Decide the size before you buy anything. A pocket notebook travels and fills fast; an A5 holds a full page of prose per entry and stays on a desk.
6. Number every page as you use it. An index is useless without page numbers, and adding them later costs an hour.
7. Write six candidate topic heads on a scrap of paper before you write any into the book. Keep the three you can already picture filling.
8. Set a floor rather than a target: one entry a week. Fifty entries a year makes a working book after a decade.

Capturing: Marking passages and keeping the source

1. Mark passages with one system and keep it: a dot in the margin for keep, a vertical line beside the lines themselves, nothing else.
2. Fold the corner of any page holding a marked passage so you can find them again without rereading the book.
3. Stop transcribing while you read. Finish the chapter first; a passage that still looks good an hour later is the one worth copying.
4. Copy the passage word for word, including the parts you would have cut. A summary loses the sentence rhythm that made you stop.
5. Write the source under every entry in the same shape every time: author, title, page, year. A missing source makes the entry unusable when you want to quote it.
6. Cap a passage at roughly 100 words. If it runs longer, copy the strongest sentence and note the page range for the rest.
7. Capture from outside books too: a line from a podcast, a sentence in an email, something a friend said at dinner. Record the date and where you heard it.
8. Keep a holding list on your phone for passages you cannot transcribe in the moment, and clear it onto paper every Sunday.

Indexing: Locke's method, headings, finding things later

1. Rule two facing pages into 26 rows, one per letter, each split into five columns for a, e, i, o and u. That grid is Locke's entire index.
2. File each new head by its first letter plus the first vowel that follows it: Courage to C-o, Attention to A-e, Grief to G-i.
3. Write the page number of a new head into its cell the moment you open the page, before you write the entry.
4. Open a head only once you have two entries for it. Single-entry heads clutter the index and slow down every lookup.
5. Keep heads to one word wherever you can. A head called how to handle criticism at work will never be reused; Criticism will.
6. Add a cross-reference line at the bottom of an entry when it argues with another one, in the form: see Consistency, page 41.
7. Once a quarter, read only your index. The head list shows what you are actually interested in, which is often different from what you say you read for.
8. If you also keep a digital copy, use the same heads as tags and nothing else. Two vocabularies split the collection in half.

Responding: Writing your own reaction beside a passage

1. Write two sentences under every passage before you close the book: what it claims, and how far you agree.
2. Date the response separately from the entry. A response written three years ago is its own piece of information when you reread it.
3. Write the strongest case against any passage you agreed with instantly. Instant agreement usually means the passage restated something you already believed.
4. When a passage stings, write down the specific memory it landed on rather than the general principle. The memory is what makes it findable later.
5. Translate one passage a week into an instruction you could follow this week. If it will not translate, note that; some passages are ornaments.
6. Put two entries that contradict each other on facing pages and write a paragraph on which one you act on in practice.
7. Once a month, write a response addressed to the author in the second person. Arguing with a named person produces sharper writing than arguing with an idea.
8. Leave a third of each page blank. The response you write in two years is usually better than the one you wrote on the day.

Themes: Building sections: courage, grief, work, death

1. Open a Courage head and file the first three passages you find that describe someone acting while afraid. Write underneath the last time you did.
2. Start a Grief head before you need one. People who begin it during a loss rarely have the attention left to copy anything out.
3. Keep a Work head for passages about craft and standards rather than productivity. Note each source's occupation, since advice travels between fields worse than it claims to.
4. Under Love, file passages describing what people actually do for each other and keep the declarations on a separate page. The two read very differently five years on.
5. Open a Death head and add one passage a month for a year. Reread all twelve in December and write what changed.
6. Under Attention, collect passages on how people spend their days, and add your own count of where your hours went once a quarter.
7. Give every head a facing page for counterexamples. A Courage section with no entry about recklessness is a sales brochure.
8. When a head reaches 20 entries, write a one-page summary of what the collection as a whole seems to argue. That page is your own thinking and it belongs in the book.

Revisiting: Rereading cadence and turning a passage into action

1. Book 30 minutes on the last Sunday of each month. Read one head end to end and add a single line connecting two of its entries.
2. Reread the whole book once a year, in one sitting if you can, and mark every entry that no longer earns its page.
3. Move dead entries to a back section instead of crossing them out. What you outgrew is a record of who you were.
4. Pick one passage a month and turn it into a specific action with a date. Write the action under the entry and the outcome beside it later.
5. Read your index before any hard decision. The heads holding the most entries are the questions you have already been working on.
6. Copy the five entries that mattered most this year onto one page at the front of next year's book.
7. When a passage keeps coming back, write out why it will not leave. A repeated return usually marks an unresolved decision rather than a favorite line.
8. Read one head aloud to someone else once a year. Passages that sound thin out loud were collected for how they looked on the page.

Commonplace Book FAQ

What is a commonplace book?

A commonplace book is a personal notebook where you copy out passages worth keeping from books, films, conversations and anything else, filed under topic headings such as courage, work or grief. It holds other people's words with your own responses underneath, and it is organized by subject so you can find an entry years after you wrote it.

How do you start a commonplace book?

Take one blank notebook, leave the first four pages for an index, and number the pages as you fill them. Copy your first passage by hand tonight with the author, title and page written underneath, then leave a third of the page blank for your response. Aim for one entry a week rather than a daily quota.

What is the difference between a commonplace book and a journal?

A journal holds your own words about your own days and is organized by date. A commonplace book holds other people's words about any subject and is organized by topic head. You reread a journal to see how you have changed, and you look up a commonplace book when you face a subject again.

What should you put in a commonplace book?

Passages from books, lines from films and podcasts, arguments you disagree with, clean definitions, numbers with their sources, letters worth keeping and things people said to you in conversation. Copy each one out in full rather than summarizing it, record the source every time, and leave room for your own response.

How did John Locke's indexing method work?

Locke ruled two pages at the front into 26 rows, one per letter, each split into five columns for the vowels a, e, i, o and u. Every topic head was filed by its first letter plus the first vowel after it, so Courage went to C-o. The cell held the page numbers where that head began.

Who kept famous commonplace books?

John Locke, John Milton, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Woolf, W. H. Auden and Ronald Reagan all kept one, and Erasmus taught the method to a generation of students in De Copia. Marcus Aurelius belongs on the list too, since the notebooks published as Meditations were written for himself rather than for readers.

Should a commonplace book be paper or digital?

Paper wins on retention, because copying by hand slows you down enough to think about the passage. Digital wins on search, backup and capture from an e-reader. A workable split is to collect highlights digitally through the week, then copy the survivors into the notebook by hand on a fixed day.

How is a commonplace book different from a reading journal?

A reading journal follows one book at a time and records your reactions to it, so it is organized by title. A commonplace book collects passages across every source you encounter and organizes them by topic instead, which means entries from six different authors can sit on the same page under one head.