I take a paper book of what size I please. I divide the two first pages
that face one another by parallel lines into five-and-twenty equal
parts, every fifth line black, the other red. I then cut them
perpendicularly by other lines that I draw from the top to the bottom of
the page. I put about the middle of each five spaces one of the twenty
letters I design to make use of, and, a little forward in each space,
the five vowels, one below another, in their natural order. This is the
index to the whole volume, how big soever it may be.
The index being made after this manner, I leave a margin in all the
other pages of the book, of about the largeness of an inch, in a volume
in folio, or a little larger; and, in a less volume, smaller in
proportion.
If I would put anything in my Commonplace Book, I find out a head to
which I may refer it. Each head ought to be some important and essential
word to the matter in hand, and in that word regard is to be had to the
first letter, and the vowel that follows it; for upon these two letters
depends all the use of the index.
I omit three letters of the alphabet as of no use to me, viz. K, Y, W,
which are supplied by C, I, U, that are equivalent to them. I put the
letter Q that is always followed with an u in the fifth space of Z. By
throwing Q last in my index, I preserve the regularity of my index, and
diminish not in the least its extent; for it seldom happens that there
is any head begins with Zu. I have found none in the five-and-twenty
years I have used this method.... When I meet with anything that I think
fit to put into my commonplace book, I first find a proper head.
Suppose, for example, that the head be EPISTOLA, I look into the index
for the first letter and the following vowel, which in this instance are
E i; if in the space marked E i there is any number that directs me to
the page designed for words that begin with an E, and whose first vowel
after the initial letter is I, I must then write under the word
Epistola, in that page, what I have to remark. I write the head in large
letters and begin a little way out into the margin, and I continue on
the line, in writing what I have to say. I observe constantly this rule
that only the head appears in the margin, and that it be continued on,
without ever doubling the line in the margin, by which means the heads
will be obvious at first sight....
If the head is a monosyllable and begins with a vowel, that vowel is at
the same time both the first letter of the word and the characteristic
vowel. Therefore I write the word Ars in A a and Os in O o....
As to the language in which one ought to express the heads I esteem the
Latin tongue most commodious, provided the nominative case be always
kept to.... But it is not of much consequence what language is made use
of, provided there be no mixture in the heads of different
languages.--W. LOCKE (Letter to Mr. Toignard).
A commonplace book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner
may draw out an army into the field on competent warning.--T. FULLER.
_The Holy and the Profane State._
Reading without thinking may indeed make a rich commonplace, but 'twill
never make a clear head.--J. NORRIS. _On the Advantages of Thinking._