The Gentle Art of Lexicography: As Pursued and Experienced by an Addict (1963)

I never use a card-index, a device idolized by those students whose sole merit is method. It is physically clumsy and mentally a constant source of bafflement. That it best serves the needs of a team engaged in a vast project, I readily admit. Only, I'm not a team. I do my own work. No; I use large exercise books, with sufficient spacing between entries, and the left-hand page a blank. If one's planning has been both careful and comprehensive, one has ample room left for additions and modifications: and one can see a considerable area ofwork displayed: the trees do not obscure the view of the wood. Cards serve well enough for singletons. For long complex entries, they are inferior, and for large groups, still more for vast constellations, they are hopeless. Quite apart from all that, one can, in the physical sense, work very much more rapidly with such exercisebooks than with such cards, for the books are so much easier to write in and one can turn forward or back so much more easily and speedily.