Entries, stars, journals & constellations

Zenith Journal draws your writing as a night sky. A few words carry the whole idea, and every screen uses them the same way.

#Entry

An entry is one thing you wrote. It has a title, its words — on one page or several — and whatever it carries: tags, ties to other entries, files such as pictures, videos and sounds, and a place.

• Each save keeps what it said before as an earlier version, so nothing is lost. See Save & earlier versions.
• An entry can also be spoken — a recording that is the entry itself, written out into words later. See Spoken entries & write it out.
• An entry that is still blank says "not written yet" wherever it shows.

#Star

A star is how an entry is drawn in the sky.

• Across is its day — the day it is filed under.
• Up and down is its height, where you placed it.
• Its shape is one of twelve, chosen on the entry or on its journal, so stars are told apart by shape and never by colour alone.

See The sky.

#The filed day

The filed day is the day an entry belongs to — where its star sits along the year. It starts as the day you wrote it, and you can move it. Moving it never changes when the entry was written. See The filed day & where it happened.

#Journal

A journal is a named, ordered group of entries.

• One entry can sit in several journals, or in none.
• A journal points at its entries; it doesn't hold the words. Taking an entry out of a journal never deletes the entry.
• A journal can have its own star shape and colour, which its entries wear unless they have their own.
• A journal can have its own extra headers, which every entry in it shows. See Extra headers.
• A journal can have its own template (Gold). An entry in it with no design yet, and the journal's presentation, start from it in the designer. See Gravity & a journal's template (Gold).

#Constellation

A constellation is a journal as the sky draws it: its stars, joined by lines you drew, with its name beside them. Drawing a line between two stars is filing: "the line is the filing. one star can join more than one constellation." The constellation you start from is the one that grows; when the two stars are in different journals, the card asks "how should they join? ▾". See Make & name a journal.

A constellation is drawn the same everywhere — the sky, the journal's page, its plate on the escritoire, its signature, the constellation widget, and a gif or video of it. Each is the sky zoomed out to fit: the same stars on the same days, at the same heights, in the same shapes, with the same lines. A star you carried stays where you put it in every one.

#Loose

An entry in no journal is loose. Its star sits a little fainter in the sky. Loose entries have a shelf of their own, loose pages, and in the orbits they circle the sun. Loose is not a fault: "plenty of writing never belongs to anything."

#The escritoire and its shelves

The escritoire is the desk where your journals are made and kept. Each journal lies there as a glass plate, with its constellation etched on it. The desk is one of four shelves:

See The escritoire.

#Tie

A tie marks two entries as about the same thing. It reads the same from either one. A tie is not a constellation line. See Tags, ties, star & colour.

#See also.

The home screen — header & corners · Closed, put away, locked, burnt & hidden · Journal words · Glossary