Main idea

A title like Atomicity does one thing and one thing only: it says which mental folder to store the content in. It classifies, it does not yet think, and it leaves the reader the work of discovering what is being asserted underneath.

A title like Atomicity serves reuse more than concision does something else. It asserts something that could be true or false, and is therefore debatable, and therefore connectable: you can contradict it, qualify it, make it the cause of another statement. Good titles of that kind are often full sentences — A capture note isn't yet an atomic note, Over-fragmenting turns links into noise, Notes by concept accumulate thought better than notes by source.

So the title is not a layer of presentation laid over content already written. It carries the whole idea, and it is what you read when you scan a base looking for something to think with.

Layer added by "What Is a Thematic Note?" (2026-06-16). The rule does not change nature when the page assembles several notes instead of carrying one: it only becomes more decisive. Customer context names a scope and licenses you to pour into it anything that comes close; Customer context becomes an asset when it connects signals, decisions, and evidence proposes a reading, and therefore excludes. The title is then the exact place where the angle commits itself or slips away, and a page whose title merely names a subject is already an inventory, whatever its content claims.

Why it matters

It shifts where the work happens. Writing a title that asserts forces you to know what you are arguing before drafting the body, and that constraint eliminates upfront the notes that had nothing to say.

It also changes what you can see of a base. An index of labels only tells you which subjects are covered; an index of propositions lets you read what the base already knows, and makes visible what is missing or what repeats.

Nuances and limits

Propositional titles do not suit everything. An entry that bounds a word asserts nothing and does not have to: the requirement applies to notes that think, not to those that define.

And a title that asserts too much can freeze things: phrased in clear-cut terms, it then resists the qualifications that accretion would bring to the body.

Open questions

• What do you do with a still-accurate title whose body, enriched by several sources, has ended up supporting a broader proposition?