The editorial method followed in The Earliest Diary of John Adams has, with slight modifications to be noted, been that followed in other parts of The Adams Papers . That method has been explained fully in the Introduction to the Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 1:lii–lxii, and is not repeated in this small volume already overburdened with editorial matter.

In view of the nature of the material to be presented, several modifications of standing Adams Papers editorial policy have seemed essential or at least very desirable. First, and most important, all the entries have been printed in the physical order in which they stand in the MS . Although we have been successful in dating most of the entries approximately, very few beyond those that John Adams wrote and dated at Harvard can be dated exactly. Any attempt to rearrange the undated entries according to our conjectural dates would, for one thing, be impossible to carry out completely; for another, it would deprive readers of some part of the evidence on which our conjectures—or better ones—must rest. We have preferred to have readers see the jumbled Diary Fragment as nearly as possible as it was when it came from John Adams’ hand. As an aid to this end, as already noted, the (editorially supplied) page numbers of the MS have been inserted throughout the text inside distinctive brackets: { }.

In another respect, however, after due reflection, we have infringed on the principle just stated. We have inserted our own captions for entries that in the MS have none. These captions are enclosed in conventional square brackets and consist of appropriate titles and conjectural dates. The dates are to be considered in all cases as approximate.

Finally, in dealing with matter canceled by the diarist (always given inside angle brackets:< >), we have been selective, sometimes perhaps arbitrarily so. When cancellations could not be read, they could not be transcribed and printed. And we have omitted many routine corrections. We have simply aimed to be generously representative of the diarist’s first thoughts that he revised.

The guide to editorial apparatus which follows is abridged from the Guide to Editorial Apparatus which appears, with appropriate modifications, in the first volume of each of the published units of The Adams Papers . The reader should refer to those volumes for fuller information on devices, code names, symbols, abbreviations, &c., that are used throughout The Adams Papers . Only those which are used in The Earliest Diary of John Adams are listed in the tables below.