Tweeting and blogging are the new commonplacing

Personal journals, known as commonplaces, used to be incredibly popular. In the digital age, we're still enamored with this practice. We just do it differently

Instead of writing things down in a journal, as our authors of yore did, we commit our thoughts to a computer record.
(Image credit: Bettmann/CORBIS)

Commonplace books, which were once quite popular, were essentially writers' notebooks, where people could collect interesting ideas and quotes. It was compiled by an individual who took pains to collect and record things from his or her reading and experience. Passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads.

Students compiled these notebooks in the course of their readings to create a stock of ideas for their speeches and compositions. Perhaps it was medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests.

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Barbara Ann Kipfer is the author of more than 50 books, including the bestselling 14,000 Things to be Happy About and The Wish List, Instant Karma, 8,789 Words of Wisdom, Self-Meditation, and The Order of Things. Barbara has an MPhil and PhD in Linguistics, a PhD in Archaeology, and an MA and PhD in Buddhist Studies. She is a lexicographer and ontologist. Her websites are www.thingstobehappyabout.com and www.referencewordsmith.com.