In the forbidden land vs On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
543words between them — 2 min of it
In the forbidden land is longer — 146,811 words against 146,268 for On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2), a difference of 543 words or about 2 min of extra reading. On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 8.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| In the forbidden land | On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Landor, Arnold Henry Savage | Ruskin, John |
| Words | 146,811 | 146,268 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 47m | 9h 45m |
| Unique words | 12,191 | 14,509 |
| Sentences | 7,939 | 5,101 |
| Average sentence length | 18.5 words | 28.7 words |
| Reading grade | 8.7 | 13.1 |
| Reading ease | 65.7 | 52.4 |
| Long words | 10% | 12.3% |
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 = |146,811 − 146,268| = 543 words 543 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, In the forbidden land or On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2)?
In the forbidden land is longer — 146,811 words against 146,268 for On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2), a difference of 543 words or about 2 min of extra reading. On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 8.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 22210 and no. 21263 — 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.
