Word Choice – Keep a Diary, Take a Diary, or Write a Diary?

differencesverbsword-choice

What is the appropriate verb for the word "diary," if I want to express the process of recording personal experiences every day? (Maybe not in an actually book but typing them in a computer.)

Merriam-Webster suggests me to use "keep a diary". But when I searched the phrases with Google, there were about 700,000 results for "keep a diary," about 1.6 million results for "take a diary," and about 1.2 million results for "write a diary." Which one is more correct? Or are they actually interchangeable? Or are they all correct but they have different meanings?

Best Answer

The problem here is that the number of hits Google says you have is wrong.

Using the right tool will give a more accurate picture. I searched COCA for _v* a diary, which finds a verb followed by "a diary". There I get:

  • ~212 results for "keep* a diary" (where "keep" includes "kept", "keeping", etc.). Some dictionaries (such as this one) explicitly list this sense of "keep". It's really no different than "keeping records".
  • ~15 results for "write* a diary" (again, this includes other forms of "write").
  • no hits for "take a diary", although I could see it being used if you meant "remove": "take a diary from the pile".

The winner is: keep a diary.

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