Why Commonplace
Publishing is a side effect of thinking well.
You read carefully and save what matters. Most of it stays in drafts. Commonplace makes the step from a saved line to a published post short enough that you take it.
The idea
“We should follow, men say, the example of the bees.”1
Seneca told a friend to read the way bees work: gather from many flowers, then turn what you gather into something of your own. That is what a commonplace book is for, and what this site is for.
- 1 Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, letter 84, translated by Richard M. Gummere.
Named for a tradition
A commonplace book is a notebook of passages copied out under heads, with a line of your own beside each. Readers kept them from the Renaissance on. John Locke published a method for indexing one.1 Milton's survives.2 Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is often read as a notebook of the same kind, written for himself.3
The web never grew its own version. What you save lives in one tool and what you write lives in another. Commonplace brings them back together, because reading and writing were never separate jobs.
What you do here
You write posts, a line or a few pages, and each one keeps its source.1
A public post goes on your site, and the best of them go out as your newsletter. An unlisted post is for sharing quietly: anyone with the link can read it, and it appears nowhere else. A private post stays with you.
Your site lives at yourname.the-commonplace.com, under your name, on the Commonplace network next to everyone else who keeps one.
- 1 The link and the name of where it came from go wherever the post goes.
What it isn't
Not a social network. Nobody here sees a like or a follower count. You can follow people and read what they publish, and nothing rewards you for posting more often. Your reading numbers are yours alone.
Not a replacement for Notion or Obsidian. Those hold structured work. Commonplace holds the reading and the notes that happen between them.
Not an AI writing tool. An assistant can save links and find your posts for you. The writing is yours.
Principles
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Write once. The same post can sit on your site and go out in your newsletter.
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Public unless you say otherwise. You choose who sees each post, every time.
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Old posts keep working. The archive is the point. A line you saved years ago is still on your site, with its source.
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Saving takes a sentence. Publishing takes a click.
Who it's for
Anyone who reads carefully and wants a home for what is left over. If you have wished your saved pages were more than a private pile, this is for you, and you will find other readers here doing the same.