How the chapters are shared out
The planner lists every chapter of the books you chose, in the order they are printed, and divides them over your days in whole chapters, so that no day has more than one chapter more than another. A day can end in one book and start the next, so one day might read Genesis 50 and Exodus 1–2. A chapter is never split. With both Testaments side by side, the Old Testament chapters and the New Testament chapters are each spread over the same days, so every day has some Old Testament reading; on longer plans some days have no New Testament chapter, because the New Testament is shorter.
Protestant and Catholic Bibles
The Protestant Bible has 66 books: 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New, 1,189 chapters in all. The Catholic Bible has seven more Old Testament books, which Catholics call deuterocanonical: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch. It also counts Daniel as 14 chapters, for 73 books and 1,328 chapters. The New Testament is the same 27 books in both. We took the books and chapter counts from the King James Version and the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition book lists on Bible Gateway, with the Catholic books in the order used by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Orthodox churches read larger Old Testament canons that are not the same in every church, so no Orthodox list is offered; your priest or parish can tell you which books your church reads.
Which translations the chapter numbers fit
Chapter numbers are almost the same in every modern translation, so the plan works with whichever Bible you read, printed or in an app. A few books are divided differently in some editions: the New American Bible, for example, has Joel in four chapters and Malachi in three, and some Bibles print Esther with the Greek additions as separate chapters. If your Bible differs, the day's reading still points to the right place within a chapter or two.
Catching up and starting part-way
If you fall behind, you do not need to start again. Choose the book and chapter you have reached, set today as the start date and keep your finish date: the planner spreads the remaining chapters over the days left. The chapters per day go up a little, and the table shows exactly what to read each day. Starting part-way is not offered for the side-by-side plan, which always begins at Genesis 1 and Matthew 1.
What this planner is, and is not
This is a simple arithmetic tool for organising your own reading. It does not show or quote any Bible text, and it does not suggest which books matter more or how a passage should be read; for those questions ask your pastor, priest or parish. Every day of a plan has at least one chapter, so a plan cannot have more days than chapters: at one chapter a day the whole Protestant Bible takes 1,189 days.