A guide to the history of physical education vs The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
219words between them — 1 min of it
A guide to the history of physical education is longer — 134,168 words against 133,949 for The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20, a difference of 219 words or about 1 min of extra reading. A guide to the history of physical education is the harder read, at grade 12 against 8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| A guide to the history of physical education | The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20 | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Leonard, Fred Eugene | Stevenson, Robert Louis |
| Words | 134,168 | 133,949 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 57m | 8h 56m |
| Unique words | 11,827 | 12,699 |
| Sentences | 6,055 | 6,747 |
| Average sentence length | 22.2 words | 19.9 words |
| Reading grade | 12 | 8 |
| Reading ease | 48.8 | 72.7 |
| Long words | 16.1% | 7.6% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |134,168 − 133,949| = 219 words 219 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, A guide to the history of physical education or The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20?
A guide to the history of physical education is longer — 134,168 words against 133,949 for The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20, a difference of 219 words or about 1 min of extra reading. A guide to the history of physical education is the harder read, at grade 12 against 8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 78009 and no. 30849 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·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.
