Diary

Generic structure  

  •  a series of entries, written on a regular basis but not necessarily every day
  •  entries are dated; the place of writing is also given in some diaries

Subject matter

  • a chronicle of events that have occurred in the writer's life since the previous entry
  • the writer's reflections and comments on life,
  • personal emotions, fantasies, hopes, plans

Cohesive ties

  • dates at the start of each entry establish a time frame, provide a means of headlining and linking each separate piece of writing
  • entries often contain reference to information already mentioned in a previous day's writing
  • many sentences start with, or contain, the personal pronoun I

 Vocabulary

  • Reflects the writer's age, background, historical period-but uses mainly words that are common in ordinary conversation
  • verbs are a mixture of 'doing' and 'thinking', showing what is happening in the writer's life, and how she or he thinks/feels about it
  • may use contractions and abbreviations (e.g. 'pleuro' for pleurisy)

Grammar  

  •   writer speaks in first-person singular (or occasionally plural)
  • audience is sometimes addressed directly-second person pronoun 'you' sometimes signals this (note that some writers speak directly to the diary as their audience, e.g. 'Dear Diary, you will see I haven't written anything for. a month')
  • elision (omission of words not absolutely necessary) is common-as in '( I ) had a lovely dream'; 'Two hundred and six out of fifteen hundred [are] dead' '[There are] not enough men left over to cut wood'
  • sentences generally in the form of statements; where questions appear they are addressed to the unseen audience
  • some variety of sentence length, but many are short and simple
  • mixture of verb tenses-past, present and future - as writer recounts what has already happened, describes current situation, looks ahead

Paragraphing and punctuation

  •  entries vary greatly in length (compare those of 17th June and 9th July)
  • longer entries are broken into short paragraphs
  • simple punctuation (full stops [periods], commas, capital letters, dashes)

 Spelling and letter pattern

  •  standard spelling
  • handwritten entries-some of these have been reproduced as they appeared in the original diary

Layout

  • date (and maybe place) appear as headline at top left of each entry
  • date underlined to give it prominence (note that when a diary is published, this underlining is usually converted into bold type or a different font)
  • a line may be drawn underneath to indicate the end of each entry