Writing Slowly

While studying the cataloguing and indexing systems of the early Twentieth Century I noticed that the index box was originally supposed to be a key to the records held elsewhere. In other words it was like a library catalogue.

The library catalogue doesn’t exist for its own sake. Rather, it’s the key to finding something else - the books stored on the library shelves. From the late 19th Century onwards, any bureaucratic organisation typically stored its records in filing cabinets (Robertson, 2021), usually numbered consecutively (numerus currens) as they arrived or were created. Then alongside these records the index box contained a parallel catalogue entry for each item (Byles, 1911).

Without a comprehensive index, it would be very hard to find anything in the records. Sure, you could find something at random, provided you didn’t care what it was, but without the index, finding a specific item would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. If the records system used running numbers it would be easy to find the most recent documents, and the longest-held, since these would be located at the end and beginning of the records, respectively. But finding anything in between these points, without an index, would be extremely time-consuming.

As I read about this approach to record-keeping, I realised that Niklas Luhmann’s system of personal academic notes, his Zettelkasten, displayed some similar features to this, as well as some crucial differences.

Luhmann was a German sociologist who famously published a massive academic output by relying on his large collection of handwritten notes, his Zettelkasten (note-box). His Zettelkasten was similar to the standard filing system in that it was a box of numbered index cards. But it differed in two important places.

First, on the whole, there were no other records. The index box simply referred to itself. The records and the index of the records were the same thing. (There were of course references to external academic sources, but I mean that Luhmann’s Zettelkasten didn’t refer to a separate location where he kept his notes such as a set of notebooks or another separate filing cabinet; rather, his notes were the records, and his records were the notes.)

Secondly, the numbering system wasn’t exactly consecutive (numerus currens), it was instead associative. In other words, the notes weren’t placed strictly in order of writing, but were arranged instead according to how their contents related to other notes. He started consecutively but then branched off by adding letters and numbers to the notation. For example, he would add a note that related to note 9 by creating note 9a, and so on (this is a slight simplification, but basically sound).

These two features, (‘records=index=records’ and ‘associative-not-consecutive-numbering’) taken together, meant that Luhmann’s Zettelkasten was effectively almost self-indexing. It was an index of itself, and there was hardly any other indexing work, other than adding cards in relevant locations, with a suitable ID number.

True, Luhmann’s second Zettelkasten did also have a keyword index, but this index of 3,200 keywords was quite limited relative to the large number of notes (67,000) it supposedly indexed. And this index didn’t reference every instance of his keywords. On the contrary, it didn’t need to be exhaustive because by means of their ID numbers the notes were arranged in long chains so Luhmann could jump from one relevant note to another, without needing to keep referring back to an index.

According to Luhmann scholar Johannes Schmidt (2018: 58):

“the file’s keyword index makes no claim to providing a complete list of all cards in the collection that refer to a specific term. Rather, Luhmann typically listed only one to four places where the term could be found in the file, the idea being that all other relevant entries in the collection could be quickly identified via the internal system of references described above.”

I really like the idea of a self-indexing system, and it somehow felt familiar, but I couldn’t think where I’d heard of this idea before.

Then I realised it’s been staring me in the face this whole time. One of my chief long-term inspirations is Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language (1977), which was also a key influence for Ward Cunningham, creator of the first ever wiki, the Portland Pattern Repository.

A Pattern Language has enjoyed a cult following and has been identified as “one of the most widely read architectural treatises ever published” (Dawes and Ostwald, 2020), though not without criticism (Dawes and Ostwald, 2017). Anyway, here’s what the preface of that book said about the concept of a pattern language:

“A pattern language has the structure of a network. […] The sequence of patterns is both a summary of the language, and at the same time, an index to the patterns.” — ‘Summary of the language’ p. xviii https://patternlanguage.cc/

It’s interesting to compare and contrast these two examples of a pre-Web, analogue hypertext. Both demonstrate significant elements of this self-indexing aspect. What Christopher Alexander said about his pattern language can also be seen in Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten. The sequence, whether of patterns or of notes, is both a summary and at the same time an index of itself.

What I take from all this is the reminder that I don’t need to work too hard at indexing, provided my notes include a few links to other relevant notes.

If every note had just one link, then all the notes would be connected. In contrast, though, a note with no links (an ‘orphan’), will be very hard to find again, except via a full-text search. So I need just enough indexing to be useful, and no more. As Luhmann himself said:

“The decision where to place what in the file can involve a great deal of randomness as long as I add references linking the other options” (Luhmann, 1987, p. 143, quoted in Schmidt, 58)

Well, now it’s time for a confession: my own collection of notes has no keyword index at all.

But I wonder how much of a keyword index would be useful for my own collection of notes. My feeling is that there’s little point in creating a separate keyword index for two main reasons, as folllows.

First, In the digital age we have at our fingertips something Luhmann never had: a full-text search capability. This means that any time I want to find all my notes containing a particular word, I can easily find them almost instantly. No need for an index just to find notes.

Second, it’s useful and efficient to do all my work on my notes in my notes. This means documenting my searches. Let’s say I want to find all my notes relating to a particular word, as in the case above. Rather than just doing the search, I also document it by creating a new note, perhaps named after the keyword I’m searching. The point is that there was a reason I wanted to do this particular search, and If I don’t document it, that particular information is forever lost. In contrast, by documenting my search I create a new note which may prove useful in future and which also acts as a kind of hub for future searches relating to this particular keyword.

This is similar, at least in spirit, to Luhmann’s ‘hub notes’ which Schmidt identifies:

“The cards containing a collection of references are furthermore of interest because they represent so-called “hubs”, i.e., cards that function as nodes that feature an above-average number of links to other cards so that these few cards provide access points to extensive parts of the file.” (Schmidt, 58)

There’s a brief but useful section on hub notes in Chapter 6 of Bob Doto’s book, A System for Writing, which clearly shows how these differ from structure notes. I found this distinction subtle but helpful.

Since I haven’t even got one, I’m not sure about giving advice on indexing, but if I was sure, I’d say this:

Make a keyword index if it pleases you to do so, especially where the keyword doesn’t otherwise appear in your note. But observe over time how much use you gain from your index. The concepts of ‘self-indexing records’ and ‘working on your notes in your notes’ may provide new insights into the value of your index-work.

References

Alexander, Christopher. A pattern language: towns, buildings, construction. Oxford university press, 2018.

Byles, R.B. 1911. The card index system; its principles, uses, operation, and component parts. London, Sir I. Pitman & Sons, Ltd.

Dawes, Michael J., and Michael J. Ostwald. “The mathematical structure of Alexander’s A Pattern Language: An analysis of the role of invariant patterns.” Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 47, no. 1 (2020): 7-24.

Dawes, Michael J., and Michael J. Ostwald. “Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language: analysing, mapping and classifying the critical response.” City, Territory and Architecture 4, no. 1 (2017): 17.

Doto, Bob. A System for Writing. New Old Traditions, 2024.

Luhmann, N. Biographie, Attitüden, Zettelkasten. In N. Luhmann, Archimedes und wir. Interviews, edited by D. Baecker & G. Stanitzek (pp. 125–155). Berlin: Merve, 1987.

Robertson, Craig. The filing cabinet: A vertical history of information. U of Minnesota Press, 2021.

Schmidt, Johannes FK. “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity.” Sociologica 12, no. 1 (2018). Reprinted as Ch 10 in Practicing Sociology: Tacit Knowledge for the Social Scientific Craft, pp. 101-115. Columbia University Press, 2024.

Stay in the Writing Slowly loop and never miss a thing (unless I forgot to press ‘publish’, in which case, yeah, you might miss a thing). Anyway:

My writing process often begins with Markdown, a simple syntax for publication on the web.

I love Markdown, but one thing has always bugged me. It’s a quirk of Markdown that simple line breaks are ignored, so that multi-line text in the source document becomes one long paragraph in the rendered html output. In other words, simply pressing Enter doesn’t result in a <br /> linebreak. Here’s what I mean. You can see the difference between the original Markdown text and the output rendered in html:

This is a sentence. Now I’ve started a new line, but I simply pressed ‘enter’. Look, I did it again. In the Markdown original, this shows up as separate sentences. But in the processed html it’s all one long paragraph. Yes, one long paragraph, which you’re reading right now. So is this a bug or a feature? Is it a feature or a bug? I added two spaces to the previous line to start a new paragraph.

A blank line has a more pronounced effect.

I’ve previously found this behaviour a bit annoying, but today I learned about semantic line breaks via sembr.org and it has completely changed the way I see line breaks working.

From now on I’ll just write every sentence on its own line, and then choose where I want the paragraphs to break, simply by ending the line with two spaces.

What’s the benefit?

This way I get to clarify my thoughts by limiting each sentence or clause to a single vertical line, while Markdown makes the paragraph formatting prettier for my readers.

As the semantic line break specification suggests,

By inserting line breaks at semantic boundaries, writers, editors, and other collaborators can make source text easier to work with, without affecting how it’s seen by readers.

I’m not sure the creators of Markdown intended this¹, but it’s how it works, and I can now take advantage of it. It used to bug me, but from now on it’s a feature.

This is an example of something simple that might be obvious to you, but which I didn’t understand till now. Do you have any other examples of similar obvious things that others may have overlooked? Or things you have overlooked that others find obvious? If so,I’d love to hear about them.

Since my notes are mainly modular, it’s fairly easy to connect two seemingly separate ideas or concepts to create a new one.

I’m intrigued by how important this activity of recombination has been in the history of innovation. For example, in 1929 the American inventor Edwin Link took the vacuum tubes, motors and bellows from his family’s player piano business and reconfigured them to create the Link Trainer. Despite its improbable origin and strikingly bad looks, this was a pioneering flight simulator that during World War 2 trained nearly half a million pilots. And it was made out of organ parts!

As I’ve said before, from fragments you can build a greater whole.

A phrase made only of two juxtaposed words, like ‘flight simulator’, can be a remarkably evocative thing. Choose the right two words and as if by magic, you’ve created a memorable phrase, a new brand, or even the kernel of an innovative technology.

In the social sciences they have been termed sensitizing concepts - which itself is a kind of two-word brand. When they’re working well, such phrases don’t really define something, rather they evoke it. In 1954 the sociologist Herbert Blumer, who originated that phrase, offered some examples from his field:

“mores, social institutions, attitudes, social class, value, cultural norm, personality, reference group, social structure, primary group, social process, social system, urbanization, accommodation, differential discrimination and social control…”

Note how many of these sensitizing concepts are two-word phrases. And note how many of these are still in use today. Pretty much all of them, although I’m not sure ‘differential discrimination’ trips off the tongue…

Such phrases are tremendously evocative. Once you’ve seen a concept like ‘social class’ or ‘cultural norm’, your whole world shifts slightly and it’s hard to un-see it.

Think, too, of some more recent examples, such as ‘tipping point’, ‘bowling alone’, ‘shock doctrine’, ‘atomic habits’. In each of these cases, the ability of the thinker to invent and develop the apposite phrase has effectively made their careers.

If the phrase is strong enough, it brands the originator with no further explanation needed. Even a seemingly awkward phrase, at the right time, can break out into popular recognition. Take ‘intersectional feminism’ - a concept that took a while to get going but then seemed to be everywhere and remains indelibly linked to the name of its originator, Kimberlé Crenshaw.

And then there’s ‘brain rot’, a term first coined in Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden.

Fully 170 years later, brain rot was named as the Oxford word of the year for 2024. Well, sometimes it takes a moment for an idea to catch on. But in the end, ‘brain rot’ beat several shortlisted words, including ‘dynamic pricing’. Thoreau, incidentally, had an intriguing working method, where he saw his written thoughts as ‘nesteggs’.

In the world of business, the two-word phrase dominates. Think of Home Depot, Mastercard, Microsoft, Netflix, PayPal, FaceBook, Instagram, Bitcoin or even that parody two word brand, TikTok. Ironically perhaps, TikTok is specifically named as having helped make brain rot a discussion point.

There are endless definitive products known by two words cleverly jammed together by marketers in search of a trademark: Band-Aid, Chapstick (or is it lip balm?), bubble wrap, dry ice, fibreglass, ping pong, super glue and super-heroes, video tape, memory stick, cell phone and crock-pot.

Meanwhile, in the German-speaking world, they’ve created a whole culture from compound nouns. It must be the Zeitgeist ¹.

Back in the Anglo-sphere, though², whether its a product (vegan cheese) or a concept (standpoint epistemology), the two-word phrase rules. I’d go so far as to suggest that for any idea to gain an audience it could benefit from the two word treatment.

This ubiquity not only helps with promoting your bright idea, it also helps to show how to discover your bright idea in the first place. Just think of two previously unrelated concepts or objects and join them together. Mostly this won’t work, but sometimes, just sometimes, it will.

I used to live in the United Kingdom³, where the pubs⁴ sell ‘pork scratchings’. Sadly this is a popular snack, which is just wrong. Although, I will reluctantly concede that if you’re going to eat something called ‘scratchings’, you might do worse than the pork variety.

This illustrates a caution I want to end with: there may only be two words at stake, but you have to choose the right two words. Who ever heard of a car depot, a car stack or a car field? No, it’s obviously a car park.

Unless, that is, it’s obviously a parking station.

I’d love to hear what two-word phrases you’ve coined lately. And if you don’t want to miss out on writingslowly, you are strongly advised to subscribe to my weekly(ish) news letter. It’s like a blog but more fashionable because it’s an email. Now that’s progress!

References:

Blumer, Herbert. 1954. “What is Wrong with Social Theory.” American Sociological Review 18: 3-10.

Davis, Kathy. 2008. ‘Intersectionality as Buzzword: A Sociology of Science Perspective on What Makes a Feminist Theory Successful’. Feminist Theory 9 (1): 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700108086364.

Richmond, Michele. The Etymology of Parking. Arnoldia – Volume 73, Issue 2 The Etymology of Parking - Arnold Arboretum PDF

Image by Bzuk (talk) - Own work (Original text: I (Bzuk (talk)) created this work entirely by myself.), Public Domain, Link