Journal is bound to be one of the first things modded I reckon

I have to agree with the OP to some extent. The Misc. quests should tell you something about the quest itself. I have about 15-20 of them in my journal and they don't tell you anything about who gave the quest or what you're doing the quest for (is this letter I'm delivering just a grocery list or a call to war).

However like others have said you can select the Miscellaneous on the left and then the actual quest on the right to show you a marker and I assume the Clairvoyance spell would work to show a path to the objective (have not tried this myself with misc. quests). I believe you can buy it in either Falkreath or Whiterun.

I agree that the journal is reeeeally vague at times. Especially the big "Misc." section. It makes it so it's impossible to NOT use the GPS system. There are no records of conversations, which is the easiest thing in the world to do, but they neglected to do it. Want to go back to a quest you got 40 hours ago?... all you have to go on is "Go here, get this." That's it. Pretty lame.

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving (and playing) the hell out of this game, but the journal lacks.

I guess they were overly concerned about complaints from the TL,DR crowd so they made quest entries short.

They should keep in mind that their core audience is still composed of CRPG folks who are used to doing at least a little reading, not MMO folks who think literacy is for 'carebears'.

Nope, I really like this journal, it's far more practical.

Their core audience is a lot larger than it was back when Morrowind came out. I'm actually willing to bet that most players are not hardcoe RPG veterans.

The Journal its self is a little... useless.
I mean it has some information, but it could certainly use more. I liked the Morrowind journal, though it was convoluted.

If you don't know how to use it, perhaps you could have started a thread asking how to use it rather than one insulting it.

If it's a quest outside the miscellaneous section, then activating it will tell the GPS to point you to all of that quest's current objectives. Everything in the miscellaneous section works a bit differently; you need to have the individual objective activated as well as the whole miscellaneous section activated for the GPS to point you toward it.

I think the quest log needs more details about the quest, especially the misc quests.

I have a misc quest right now "Return to Vekel". Who's Vekel? Where is he? Why am I returning to him? What quest have I completed? I have no idea! I can't remember! That's why I have a journal, to write it down so I don't have to remember.

When you get quests from reading a random book, the journal does not even associate the quest with the book/journal! Lame.

It's not even a journal, it's like a GPS tracking system for quests.

I don't like the style of the quest journal, that you should follow a GPS for quests instead of written clues.

With the quest GPS and instant travel combo, I kind of feel like I'm cheating. And yet the journal and horses are the two most badly implemented features of the game imo.

The journal problem is going to get worse as time goes on and I don't play the game for days/weeks/months at a time and then come back to it. Not going to remember a thing about any of the quests, and I won't be able to find anything out in the journal, will just have to follow arrows.

Even being one of the "nah, I don't hate the quest markers" people, I was somewhat dismayed that quests in the journal don't seem to have any kind of info blurb for them. Even if it was just for flavor, it's still nice to have. (Especially when you've completed one of the mini-tasks, without using markers or anything, and now you need to remember who the heck you were doing it for.)

I think the way the journal works is fine but i do agree that there should be a little bit more information... especially in the Misc. section where it just gives you a sentence to sum up the quest. which is fine but give me a "Details" option on each one that expands down and gives me the full story.

The thing is, with all of these responses I see the same thing:
"The compass points you to where you need to go."

That's all fine and good. What I think is missing though, is that the journal doesn't give you any reminder of why you need to go there. The journal is not the compass. My journal should keep track of conversations, places, and circumstances so that I know the context of the quest that I'm on. And as some have said, it's also just nice to read through them, even after the quest is done.

I completely agree the journal was a ton better in Oblivion. By simply giving some background to the quests they felt meaningful, now i really just feel like it is a MMO-type quest where i am just fetching things. Not saying the quests were better in Oblivion, just that the extra information back then made them feel more special.

I think the best would have been (as several have suggested) if it would be possible to click the "mission objective" and get some additional information for those of us who like that.

The trouble with the journal is that it has the minimum info possible. In that respect it's pretty realistic because I take crappy notes in real life, too

Yeah, I think that is what my problem is. I just selected the quest and not the misc. category itself. The manual is lacking in how that works as well. Thanks for the help.

I still stand by my comments though that the journal is in need of dire overhaul. It should have some information on what exactly I'm doing and who I'm doing it for not just a note saying "Deliver letter to Skard".

The only problem is that I'm playing on the XBox so a journal overhaul will most likely won't happen for me.

The Misc quests are ridiculous in they way they are listed. I have one quest which simply says talk to Aventus Areteno, who the hell is that, where the hell did I get the quest. After playing the game and doing other things you quite literally forget who the people are, where they are, what they wanted. In Oblivion it listed each stage in your journal so you could keep track cleary of what quests you had and what you had done thus far within them. Here it tells you next to nothing. The journal is terrible the worst in any game I have ever played, hopefully a mod will sort that part of the menu system out

I have to agree with OP. I experienced pretty much the exact same problem and realized I need to keep my own journal.

Yah the journal is pretty bad. They should have the previous stages posted to jog your memory "Why am I delivering this letter to Isgard? Who is Isgard again?". Have the NPCs give directions like in Morrowind, at least something like "Go talk to Jogahlochlavious, he's an alchemist living in Windhelm and has a house by the keep." Instead of "Talk to Jogahlocahlavious." It forces me to use my GPS and map to know what the [censored] they are talking about and makes it seem artificial or in other words: I just follow the arrow and don't really know why.

People will complain about anything.

I too would like some more info in the quest log. You get so many quests it's easy to forget what the quest is about, and so you end up with a long list of stuff to do but no idea why you're being asked to do it.

I don't know what your definition of "babystep" is, but I'm pretty sure pointing the exact location of the dead body of someone who went missing years ago would fit.

But this actually is important. The journal is horrible. I'm 12 hours into the game and already don't remeber where I'm supposed to go and why - I'm forced to write all the information down in a notebook. That's not supposed to happen while playing a game with a journal system implemented.
Also, I play with compass disabled, which means I have absolutely no way of finding the person I was asked to talk to. Roleplay-wise, my character doesn't use magic, so even if Clairvoyance worked, it's out of the question. It's a good thing I was going to keep a diary of my Skyrim journeys anyway, otherwise I'd be seriously screwed.
As for now, the journal in this game is useless. I hope they mod this soon.

Go to the quest you want to find, and press the button that says, "Show on Map." It's as easy as that...

This. I really enjoyed Oblivion's backlog of descriptive info for each quest. That and the font was nicer. I feel like the font being used in Skyrim doesn't fit the mood of the game at all, not a huge deal just something I like to gripe about.

Agreed. I have that same quest to talk to Aventus Areteno and I have no idea who he is or why I'm supposed to talk to him. I know where he is by looking at the map and having that quest 'activated' in the journal, but I don't know why I need to talk to him or who even gave me the quest. I'm loving Skyrim but it's sad that Morrowind's quest journal was a lot better and it's 10 years older. I guess Bethesda didn't think a bunch of console players would want to take the time to read quest details and would, instead, like to have their hand held to each quest with a map marker and not a care as to why they're even doing the quest. Run and gun questing.... perfect for consoles, bad for PCs.