Journals can be as sophisticated or as simple as the writer chooses.  In Sophia MacNab's journal she wrote, "I have now finished writing this book through and it has taken me nearly seven months.  I am twenty one.  My dear Momma told me to keep one always and if I keep it until I am twenty one I will have written thirteen volumes.  I only hope that I may have the perseverance to continue it," Sophia wrote on July 8th., 1846.

Some of us may feel like Sophia did on one particular day:

"I think is would do almost as well to write one day and copy all the next from it, there is so little variety....it is useless to give such a long detail of each day, so I am merely going to put that we went through the usual 'routine'."

THE DIARY of SOPHIE MACNAB, written at Dundurn Castle, Hamilton, 1846 age 13.  W.L. Griffi Printing, 1968.