The Two Quills: On the Craft of the Quick Jot and the Formal Excerpt
There is a quiet schism in the world of readers, a divide not of subject or genre, but of method. It occurs the moment we put pen to paper, or more accurately, the moment we choose which pen to use. On one side of the desk sits the stub of a pencil, a worn ballpoint, anything that can capture a thought in its raw, immediate state. On the other rests the fountain pen, filled with a specific ink, reserved for a more ceremonious task. These are the instruments of two distinct crafts: the Quick Jot and the Formal Excerpt.
The Quick Jot is a reflex. It is the sharp intake of breath at a stunning turn of phrase, the underlining of a sentence that seems to speak directly to a private thought. It is a star in the margin, a ‘YES!’ scribbled hastily, a connecting line drawn between paragraphs. This method is one of pure, unadulterated reaction. Its value lies not in its elegance, but in its authenticity. The Quick Jot is an archaeological layer of your own mind, a fossilized impulse that marks the precise moment a text reached out and touched you. When you return to a book years later, these jots are often more illuminating than the passage itself; they are a map of your former intellectual and emotional landscape.
In stark contrast, the Formal Excerpt is an act of deliberate transference. It is the careful copying of a significant passage into a dedicated notebook, a commonplace book, or a digital archive. This is not a reaction, but a ritual. The choice of notebook, the specific pen, the neatness of the hand—all are part of the craft. The act of writing it out word-for-word is a form of slow digestion. It forces the mind to linger on each syllable, to appreciate the architecture of the argument or the rhythm of the prose in a way that mere reading cannot facilitate. The Formal Excerpt is an act of claiming. By physically rewriting the words, you make them your own, weaving the author’s thread into the tapestry of your own thoughts.
One is not superior to the other; they are complementary forces in a complete reading life. The Quick Jot preserves the spark of initial encounter, the visceral heat of discovery. The Formal Excerpt provides the enduring fuel, the curated collection of wisdom to be returned to and reflected upon. The jot is the spontaneous field note; the excerpt is the carefully composed entry in the ledger of your learning. To have only jots is to possess a chaotic scattering of insights without a central hearth. To have only excerpts is to risk a library of borrowed wisdom, devoid of the personal, passionate context that gives it life. The craft, then, is in knowing which tool to reach for in the moment, and in understanding that both are essential for building a rich and deeply personal dialogue with the written word.
Notes & further reading
A few pages I came back to while writing this: