3 ms·

Possibly dumb question, but why not use notation like vol 2, page 50 instead of page 210?

• throwanem 6y ago
  It's an entirely reasonable question! The answer is, because I started this numbering scheme with the diary I began back at the start of 2018, and I'm more pleased that that's just about to reach page 1000 than I would be if it were about to reach page 100 of volume 5. Since I was already in the habit, it made sense to employ the same system in my work notebooks when I likewise standardized those. In both cases, it also makes for a more compact scheme of reference, since I only need to write "pp. 380-382", rather than "vol. 3 pp 20-22" or "pp. 3/20-22" or some other such notation that requires an explicit volume number - not that that's not a somewhat post hoc reason, but I have found it to be convenient, and there's nothing wrong in any case with deriving some enjoyment from the fact that the very page numbers themselves reflect the extent to which I've developed journaling and notetaking into deliberate and durable practices in their own right. (Especially when I number the pages of a fresh volume, as part of the process of preparing it when I approach the end of the one I've been filling. Numbering from 1 to 180 over and over again seems like it'd get dull! Numbering from 999 to eleven hundred and whatever, as I did yesterday, is much more enjoyable.) All that aside, I definitely don't have any argument for why the scheme I use is the scheme everyone should use. It's just what works best for me, and in the context of any running document someone maintains for their own use, what works best for them is what matters.