Gather from what you read. Make it your own.1

Keep a passage with its source2 and a line of your own, or a whole essay when it deserves one. Your site carries it under your name and your taste.3 The best of it goes out as your newsletter. Some you share quietly by link,4 and some you keep for yourself.

Start your commonplace Explore others →

Free to start, with your site and newsletter included.

  1. 1 Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, 84: “We should follow, men say, the example of the bees,” gathering from many books and blending what we gather into something of our own.
  2. 2 The link and the name of where it came from go wherever the post goes, newsletter included.
  3. 3 Six themes today. Your own templates and your own domain open soon.
  4. 4 An unlisted post opens for anyone with the link and shows up nowhere else, search engines included.

What a post looks like

Examples

readinghighlight

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.1

Most of what I save is for tasting. This is the test for which ones earn a post.

  1. 1 Francis Bacon, Of Studies, 1625.

readingpost · yourname · 6 min read

Reading fewer books, more slowly

Bacon sorted books into three piles: tasted, swallowed, and chewed.1 For a year I only wrote about the third pile, and the posts got shorter as the reading got slower.

The rule I kept coming back to was three words long.2 Most of what I cut was me explaining why a book mattered instead of showing the line that did.

  1. 1 Francis Bacon, Of Studies, 1625.
  2. 2 William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style, 1918.

Recently in Browse

Public posts, one per person, newest first

  1. "RAG Is Dead” Is a Lazy Take

    Every few months, someone declares RAG is dead. Usually right after a new model launches with a larger context window. 128k. 1M. “Why retrieve…

    Miguel Cardoso · note

  2. motherhood · mumlogue

    The Three Attitudes Mothers Face — and the One We Deserve

    This story has also been shared on medium Motherhood does not happen in a vacuum. It unfolds in public spaces, family gatherings, comment sections…

    Ally Ze · lesson

  3. claude · agents

    Claude Code costs up to $200 a month. Goose does the same thing for free.1

    Never heard of Goose before but seems like its trying to attract customers by being "free", specifically Claude lovers. Got to try it out later!

    Joel Oliveira · bookmark

    1. 1 venturebeat.com
Everything public →

Keep

Clip a page or a highlight with the browser extension, or ask your AI assistant to save a link. Everything lands in one reading list, oldest saves first, and a weekly email shows what is still waiting.

Your Commonplace address is an inbox for your reading list, too. Subscribe to a newsletter with yourname@the-commonplace.com and each issue lands in the list, with a button to unsubscribe right on it.1 Mail you send it from your own address becomes a note.

  1. 1 Turn on Email to your reading list in Profile → Preferences first. Up to 50 emails a day get in.

Write

Each post is a jotting, the old word for an entry in a commonplace book.1 Most start from something you read and end with why it mattered to you, in a line or over a few pages. The source stays attached.

  1. 1 More on the name at the end of this page.

  • evolutionhighlight

    There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one.1

    The last pages of the book, and the least technical. It ends on wonder, not proof.

    1. 1 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859.

  • sciencebookmark

    If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.1

    Worth reading the whole letter for the context, not just the line.

    1. 1 Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke, 1675.

  • governmentnote

    If men were angels, no government would be necessary.1

    The case for checks and balances in nine words.

    1. 1 The Federalist No. 51, 1788.

  • craftlesson

    Omit needless words.1

    Three words, and the rule follows its own advice.

    1. 1 William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style, 1918.

Your space

Your space on the Commonplace network is ready the day you sign up, next to everyone else who keeps one. There is nothing to build. Write a public post and it is on your site,1 where readers can follow you by RSS.

Make the site look like yours if you want, down to the last template, or leave it as it is.2

Plan a sprint, a reading path through one topic, and publish it so someone else can walk the same path.

yourname.the-commonplace.com A reader's commonplace evolutionThere is grandeur in this view of life, with its several…scienceIf I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of…governmentIf men were angels, no government would be necessary. An example site
  1. 1 yourname.the-commonplace.com, in one of six themes. New sites are checked by hand before visitors see them.
  2. 2 Your own templates and your own domain open soon.

Ask

Connect the AI assistant you already use.1 Ask it to save the link you just found, or to find the post where you wrote about that book last spring.

  1. 1 Claude and ChatGPT both connect over MCP. Commonplace asks for your consent before an assistant connects.

Your readers find you. Nobody ranks you.

Your public posts appear in Browse,1 next to others who cite their sources. People who like what they find can follow you, and the ones who want more join your newsletter. You see what lands.2 Nobody else sees a count, and nothing nudges you to post.

  1. 1 Browse lists the newest public posts from verified sites.
  2. 2 Your dashboard shows how often each post is read and who subscribed. Visitors never see it.

Follow people, not numbers.

Follow anyone from their site, and their public posts come to you in one feed, next to the newsletters you already get from them.

What you won't find is anything counted in public. Nobody sees how many people follow you, and nothing keeps score of how often you post.

Why the name

A commonplace book is a notebook of passages copied out under heads, each with a line of your own beside it. Readers have kept them since the Renaissance, and John Locke published a way to index one.1 Commonplace keeps one for the web: your tags are the heads, and the best posts become your site and newsletter.

  1. 1 John Locke, A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books, 1706.

Index

Tags people file their public posts under. Each opens the posts of the person who files the most under it.

Start a page of your own.

https://yourname.the-commonplace.com

Start your commonplace Why a commonplace book? →

New sites are checked by hand before they appear in Browse.