Plain Lab · journal
Commonplace Insert
A running index of what you read, a hundred pages to copy out the passages worth keeping, and college-ruled space for the reading that does not fit either.
Specification
- Trim
- 127 × 177.8 mm · 5 × 7 in
- Pages
- 160
- Leaves
- 80
- Sheets
- 40
- Signatures
- 5 × 32pp
- Spine
- 9.15 mm
- Paper
- white
- Ruling
- lined
- Ruling pitch
- 7.14 mm · 20.25 pt · 9/32 in
- Rows per page
- 20
A commonplace book is older than the notebook aisle: a place to copy out the lines you do not want to lose to the next page you turn. Underlining a sentence in somebody else's book does not keep it. Writing it out in your own hand, with the source, does.
One hundred pages are built for exactly that: a line for the book, a line for the page number, and room to copy the passage. Each one also carries a short prompt asking why this passage was kept, in your own words. I have copied a line out without noting where it came from more than once, and spent longer hunting it down again than the copying itself took. The two blank fields at the top exist because of that, not because a form needed filling.
Six pages at the front hold a running index: page number against author or subject, filled in as the book fills up rather than guessed at the start. Forty-eight pages of college-ruled notes close it out, for the reading that does not fit the compose format: a lecture, a half-remembered argument. A page of your own thinking that started from someone else's belongs there too.
What is inside
- Copied out
- 100pp
- Passage, source and a note on why it was kept, so a line copied out is never just handwriting.
- Index
- 6pp
- A running record of page against author or subject, filled in as the book fills.
- Loose notes
- 48pp
- College-ruled space for the reading that does not fit the compose format.
The film
Page by page
A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.
Real pages
Made at the Hibrkraft bindery, Bogor · about the maker
Books that sit alongside it
- Caregiver's JournalWorks alongsideshares personal-writing
- Dream JournalWorks alongsideshares personal-writing
- Evening InsertWorks alongsideshares personal-writing
- Field Naturalist's JournalWorks alongsideshares personal-writing
- Field Notes InsertWorks alongsideshares note-taking
- Grief JournalWorks alongsideshares personal-writing
- Interview JournalWorks alongsideshares note-taking, personal-writing
- Reading JournalWorks alongsideshares note-taking, personal-writing
Questions
What is a commonplace book, exactly?
A running collection of passages worth keeping, copied out by hand with their source, rather than underlined and left in someone else's book.
What are the two fields at the top of each entry?
Book and page, so a passage copied out can always be found again.
Is the loose-notes section ruled the same way?
Yes, college pitch, 7.14 mm, the same as the rest of the book.
Does it come with a cover?
No. This is the sewn block for a leather cover made separately.
Is it dated?
No. The index fills in as you go, not against a calendar.
Who keeps a commonplace book?
Readers who want to hold onto what they read past the page they read it on: students, researchers, anyone copying out sermons, lectures or lines from a novel.
Every leisure moment was now employed in reading one thing or another.
