(In which we define “Commonplace” in the context of reading and study.)

What are “commonplaces”? Why do I tag the quotations that I post here “commonplaces”?

Wikipedia can tell you that: “Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: sententiae (often with the compiler’s responses), notes, proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes. Entries are most often organized under systematic subject headings and differ functionally from journals or diaries, which are chronological and introspective.” Source in Wikipedia

I’ve read various explanations for why the word “commonplace” is used this way. The simplest is that hereby you gather all your reading notes into a single location – a common place – rather than spreading them out over several locations.

But, wait! There’s more!!

A little over a century ago, beginning in 1916, Professor Theodore Graebner (of Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis, MO) began a series of lectures to the seminarians on the topic of their self-directed continuing education after they entered parish ministry. Mainly at the students’ request, his lectures were published in 1921 under the title The Pastor as Student and Literary Worker. I came across the 2nd edition (1925) around the time I graduated from seminary. Graebner’s system for capturing useful information really caught my eye.

But as the personal computer era was dawning, I never really used his paper-based system in any sustained way. I’ve recently begun using a free app called “Obsidian” to organize reading notes on my laptop. It seems to provide me with the things Graebner laid out all those years ago, with the addition of hyperlinks between notes. Obsidian also brings all the advantages and disadvantages of working in digital media that we’ve learned to enjoy or struggle with. As this post isn’t about Obsidian, but about Commonplaces I want to copy out some of Graebner’s words. I think they’re fundamental to any note-taking system, even in the digital age.

"Wide and diversified reading, continued through many years of application, is the essential thing. There is no royal road to literary accomplishment, as little as there is a royal road to knowledge. …

“How to gather, classify and dispose the matter which goes into composition and how to make such matter readily available for elaboration into literary form,–be it a newspaper article, a sermon, a conference paper, a Synodical essay, a treatise, or a book,–and how to perform this work with a minimum of wasted time and fruitless effort, requires, first of all, the application of certain mechanics of authorship, and the keystone to this preliminary work is the commonplace book.” (page 98)

Well, there it is: the reason for the commonplace book is to help you organize notes from your “wide and diversified reading” so you can create your own wide variety of literary works.