Cicero's Tusculan Disputations vs Paul Clifford — Complete
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
529words between them — 2 min of it
Cicero's Tusculan Disputations is longer — 181,375 words against 180,846 for Paul Clifford — Complete, a difference of 529 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations is the harder read, at grade 12.5 against 12.2.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Cicero's Tusculan Disputations | Paul Clifford — Complete | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Cicero, Marcus Tullius | Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron |
| Words | 181,375 | 180,846 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 12h 06m | 12h 03m |
| Unique words | 11,884 | 14,759 |
| Sentences | 6,350 | 6,427 |
| Average sentence length | 28.6 words | 28.1 words |
| Reading grade | 12.5 | 12.2 |
| Reading ease | 56.1 | 57.4 |
| Long words | 11% | 10.2% |
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 = |181,375 − 180,846| = 529 words 529 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Cicero's Tusculan Disputations or Paul Clifford — Complete?
Cicero's Tusculan Disputations is longer — 181,375 words against 180,846 for Paul Clifford — Complete, a difference of 529 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations is the harder read, at grade 12.5 against 12.2.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 14988 and no. 7735 — 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.
