Part of the data ring
ReadLength
Thomson, Alexis · d. 1924 · measured edition

Manual of Surgery Volume Second

14h 04mof reading at 250 wpm

Manual of Surgery Volume Second by Thomson, Alexis runs to 211,036 words — about 14h 04m of reading at an average adult pace of 250 words per minute, or roughly 767 pages at typical paperback density.

Extent 211,036 words · 9,596 distinct forms · 9,131 sentences · F–K grade 12.7

SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·computed from the full text·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Extent — 767 pages against 14h 04m of reading

Above the rule one mark per reading hour at 250 wpmBelow a folio every 50 pages at 275 words to the page

SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·counted from the text, not a publisher's page count·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Words211,036longer than 87% of books here
Reading time14h 04mat 250 wpm
Reading level12.7Flesch–Kincaid grade
Chapters297,277 words each

How this is worked out

  1. The Project Gutenberg plain-text edition is fetched, then Gutenberg's header and licence footer are struck at the *** START *** and *** END *** markers. Nothing is taken from a publisher's listing.
  2. What remains is counted as that edition sets it: 211,036 words, 9,131 sentences, syllables by vowel-group heuristic.
  3. Words are divided by a stated reading rate. This page's headline uses 250 words a minute; a duration printed without its rate cannot be checked, so the rate travels with every figure and the table below runs 150–450 wpm.
  4. Minutes are rounded once, to the nearest minute, and set as h:mm. Nothing on this page is rounded twice.
  5. The page extent is a courtesy conversion at 275 words to the page — a typesetting figure, not a property of the book.
words ÷ rate            = minutes
211,036 ÷ 250 wpm   = 844 min   → 14h 04m
words ÷ density         = extent
211,036 ÷ 275 w/pp  = 767 pages

The method in full, including why your count may differ →

How long it takes to read, by reading speed

Most adults read prose at 200–300 words per minute. Reading speed varies far more between people than most reading-time estimates admit, so here is the whole range.

Reading speedTotal timeAt 30 min/dayAt 1 hour/day
Slow / careful (150 wpm) 23h 27m47 days24 days
Below average (200 wpm) 17h 35m36 days18 days
Average adult (250 wpm) 14h 04m29 days15 days
Fast (300 wpm) 11h 43m24 days12 days
Very fast (450 wpm) 7h 49m16 days8 days

The full measurement

Total words211,036
Unique words9,596
Lexical diversity4.55% unique words as a share of total
Sentences9,131
Average sentence length23.1 words
Average syllables per word1.63
Long words (3+ syllables)17.1%
Chapters detected29 — averaging 7,277 words
Flesch–Kincaid grade12.7
Flesch reading ease45.1 higher is easier; 60–70 is plain English
Gunning fog index16.1
Coleman–Liau index12

Computed from the Project Gutenberg plain-text edition with the Gutenberg header and licence footer removed. See how and why your count may differ.

SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·ebook no. 28428·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Reading it in evenings

The same 211,036 words, divided by the habit rather than by the hour — and then a rate of your own, if 250 wpm is not yours.

10 min a day 85 days
20 min a day 43 days
30 min a day 29 days
60 min a day 15 days
Worked from the text: 211,036 words ÷ 250 words per minute = 844 minutes of reading, divided by the daily habit and rounded up to whole days.

SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·reading rate stated: 250 wpm·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Average adult prose speed is 200–300 wpm. Not sure? Time yourself on one page.

Is it a hard read?

Four different readability formulas agree it is demanding — high school level: Flesch–Kincaid puts it at grade 12.7, Gunning fog at 16.1, Coleman–Liau at 12. The Flesch reading-ease score of 45.1 is heavy going by modern standards.

The mechanics behind that: sentences average 23.1 words (modern prose tends to run 15–20), and 17.1% of words are three syllables or longer. Its vocabulary is fairly repetitive — 9,596 distinct words, or 4.55% of the total.

A caution about all of this: readability formulas measure sentence and word length, nothing more. They cannot see irony, dialect, allusion or an unreliable narrator. A book can score as "easy" and still be genuinely difficult to follow.

The second question

What people ask once the duration is on the table.

How many words are in Manual of Surgery Volume Second?

211,036 words in the Project Gutenberg edition, made up of 9,596 distinct words across 9,131 sentences. That is longer than 87% of the books measured on this site.

How long does it take to read Manual of Surgery Volume Second?

About 14h 04m at an average adult reading speed of 250 words per minute. A slower reader at 150 wpm would need roughly 23h 27m; a fast reader at 400 wpm about 8h 48m.

What reading level is Manual of Surgery Volume Second?

It scores 12.7 on the Flesch–Kincaid grade scale — demanding — high school level. Its Flesch reading-ease score is 45.1, sentences average 23.1 words, and 17.1% of its words run to three syllables or more.

How many pages is Manual of Surgery Volume Second?

Page counts depend entirely on the edition — font, trim size and margins all change them, which is why this site measures words instead. At a typical trade-paperback density of about 275 words per page, 211,036 words works out to roughly 767 pages.

Colophon

Measured from the Project Gutenberg plain-text edition, ebook no. 28428, with Gutenberg’s header and licence footer struck before counting. 211,036 words, 9,131 sentences, 9,596 distinct forms. No text of the work is set anywhere on this site — only measurements of it.

The extent of 767 pages is a conversion at 275 words to the page, not this edition’s foliation: a page count belongs to a typesetting, never to a book. Reading time assumes 250 words a minute and is stated with its rate everywhere it appears.

SOURCE·Project Gutenberg ebook no. 28428·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.

See all 10 sites in this family, with what each one answers

Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.