A Diary in Numbers
One person, one diary, written since March 1996. This page adds up what has been published online so far (counted on 30 October 2026). The complete diary, kept on the author’s own computer, runs to about 26 million words; this page counts only the part that is published here.
How much of the diary is online?
The complete diary runs to about 26 million words. This is how much of it you can read here today.
11.1% online (2,886,001 words)88.9% still to be published (about 23,113,999 words)
Words per year
The diary is not evenly spread: four enormous years at the start, a long pause, then a return in 2017. Tap a bar.
Tap or hover a year.
See the numbers as a table
| Year | Entries | Words |
|---|---|---|
| 1996 | 325 | 244,494 |
| 1997 | 351 | 251,541 |
| 1998 | 505 | 824,043 |
| 1999 | 619 | 1,150,192 |
| 2000 | 2 | 3,647 |
| 2001 | 30 | 38,429 |
| 2002 | 3 | 5,892 |
| 2003 | 31 | 37,876 |
| 2004 | 31 | 53,450 |
| 2005 | 2 | 3,785 |
| 2006 | 2 | 4,363 |
| 2017 | 14 | 13,904 |
| 2018 | 113 | 94,783 |
| 2019 | 2 | 1,591 |
| 2020 | 31 | 35,264 |
| 2021 | 19 | 20,285 |
| 2022 | 29 | 29,364 |
| 2025 | 13 | 17,718 |
| 2026 | 210 | 55,380 |
How big is that?
Rough comparisons using common published word counts.
The biggest writing days
On these days the diary ran to many thousands of words, split into several parts.
The eras
The diary is organised into eras. Entries per era:
Use these numbers
<a href="https://diaryofamadchaos.com/a-diary-in-numbers/">A Diary in Numbers, Diary of a Mad Chaos</a>Counted from the published diary on 30 October 2026 and refreshed automatically as new entries are published. Words are counted from the text of each entry. More about the project: the history of the diary and the timeline.