Diary is a book in which you record your thoughts and feelings or what has happened each day. Diary is a book with separate page for each day in which you write your arrangements, etc. Journal is a series magazine or newspaper that is published regularly about a particular subject: Woman magazine.

A diary is normally something private - something you don't particularly want to share with others. Maybe you write secrets or things about your life you don't want others to read. A journal is something you maybe write highlights about your day in. It's not necessarily personal, maybe it's something you'd like your future children to read to learn more about your life, or you yourself to read in the future to remember forever.

The definitions for 'diary', which Qasem kindly copied from the Cambridge English dictionary for our benefit, are correct in terms of the English used outside the US: 1. A book in which you record your thoughts or feelings or what has happened each day 2. a book with a separate space or page for each day, in which you write down your future arrangements, meetings, etc. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/diary In US English, only the first usage of 'diary' is current, and 'journal' is used to mean something very similar. Personally, I don't have a view on the exact difference between the words 'diary' and 'journal' when used to mean a record of daily events, thoughts and feelings, because I wouldn't use 'journal' in this way. I was interested to find this, though: http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-journal-and-vs-diary/ The writer of this article states " The diary is like a record of a person’s daily activities; it is much like a mini newspaper that contains details about specific events during the day. A journal is much more personal than a diary. A journal contains feelings, emotions, problems, assurances and is pretty much used to examine one’s life." This seems to contradict what Adrianna says. I also came across a webpage where somebody said that girls write diaries while boys write journals! So maybe even native speakers aren't sure of the difference.

Thanks for taking the time to answer this question, everyone. I appreciate your time and effort. :)