The Word of the Day

About this journal

One word. That is the whole rule.

Every evening you write down the one word that belongs to the day, and then a sentence about why. Some days the word is obvious before you pick up the pen. Some days you sit with it for a minute, and that minute is the point.

By December you are holding a dictionary of your own year: the words you reached for, and the ones that reached for you.

366 days, two to a page

Each entry has room for the word, the date and a line or two explaining it. Two entries share a page, which keeps the book a sensible thickness and makes yesterday visible while you write today.

It works because it is small. A word and a sentence can be done in the time it takes the kettle to boil, and a habit that takes a minute is a habit that reaches December.

What is inside

• 366 dated entries, two to a page, room for a leap year
• Space for the word and the reason, not just the word
• Two short pages on choosing a word when the day was nothing special
• A closing look back at the year in words
• Undated: start today rather than waiting for January
• Two lined pages at the back

Who it is for

• Anyone who wants a daily journal and cannot face a full page
• Writers, teachers and people who like words for their own sake
• Someone learning English who wants a place to keep new vocabulary in context
• A small, thoughtful gift for her birthday or for Christmas
• Anyone who has quit a journal because it asked for too much

The year reads differently at the end

Read three hundred words in a row and something appears that no single day would have shown you. The same word turns up in March and in September. A run of flat words sits over a month you thought was fine.

That is a year described in your own vocabulary, which is a more honest account than a full page of explanation would have been.

Questions people ask

Does it have to start on 1 January? No. It is undated, so today is day one.

What if nothing happened today? Those are the interesting entries. There are two pages at the front on exactly that, and the flat words turn out to say the most in the read-back.

Can I write more than one sentence? There is room for a line or two. If you want a full page a day this is the wrong book, and that is deliberate.

Is it suitable as a gift? It is the smallest ask of any journal on this list, which makes it the safest one to give to somebody who has never kept one.

The details

• 6 x 9 inches, 198 pages, matte cover
• Undated, so a missed week costs you nothing
• Printed in colour on white paper
• Fits on a nightstand or in a bag

One word a day, for a year of your own language.

Also from Mara Linde

A Line a Day, five years of two lines a night on one page per date, and The Cycle Journal, two years of noticing what your body is telling you.