Commonplace book vs journal
A journal is your day. A commonplace book is other people's lines, collected so they can return.
You search commonplace book vs journal because you already keep one notebook, and it is filling up with both. The morning. The argument. The line from the novel you meant to find again. Months later you can reconstruct the day. You cannot get the line back.
They are not two names for the same habit.
A journal is yours. You write what happened, how it felt, what you meant to do. The unit is the day, or the entry. Tomorrow you add another. The book is a record of you.
A commonplace book is other people's words. You collect an item: the text, its source, and the date you collected it. You are its keeper, not its author. A short annotation about why it stayed is enough. Skip the annotation if the line is enough. Later, once you have half-forgotten it, the item returns as a recollection.
If you put both in the same book, the day wins. The item becomes a stray paragraph between breakfast and a list. Recollection has nothing to return to, because the line was never the unit.
Some keepers split them on purpose. One book for the day. One notebook for borrowed lines. The split is the point. A diary that swallows quotations is still a diary. A commonplace book that starts with today I felt is no longer collecting.
How to keep: collect the item while the line is in front of you. Not tonight. Not when you remember. The source goes with it. That is the whole practice.
If that is the search, start here: How to keep a commonplace book
Opuss is that notebook, for iPhone. Free on the App Store.
You collect an item. You can add an annotation. Later it returns as a recollection.
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The letter
Read issue 1. Ten we kept this week, and how to keep your own. Or start with how to keep.