A Terrible Temptation vs Manures and the principles of manuring
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
696words between them — 3 min of it
A Terrible Temptation is longer — 133,916 words against 133,220 for Manures and the principles of manuring, a difference of 696 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Manures and the principles of manuring is the harder read, at grade 10.6 against 7.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| A Terrible Temptation | Manures and the principles of manuring | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Reade, Charles | Aikman, Charles Morton |
| Words | 133,916 | 133,220 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 56m | 8h 53m |
| Unique words | 10,318 | 6,675 |
| Sentences | 7,293 | 7,226 |
| Average sentence length | 18.4 words | 18.4 words |
| Reading grade | 7.4 | 10.6 |
| Reading ease | 75 | 51.8 |
| Long words | 6.6% | 16.7% |
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 = |133,916 − 133,220| = 696 words 696 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, A Terrible Temptation or Manures and the principles of manuring?
A Terrible Temptation is longer — 133,916 words against 133,220 for Manures and the principles of manuring, a difference of 696 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Manures and the principles of manuring is the harder read, at grade 10.6 against 7.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 7895 and no. 27274 — 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.
