Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2 vs The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
3,742words between them — 15 min of it
Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2 is longer — 255,991 words against 252,249 for The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6), a difference of 3,742 words or about 15 min of extra reading. Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2 is the harder read, at grade 8.7 against 7.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2 | The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Lyman, William Denison | Pliny, the Elder |
| Words | 255,991 | 252,249 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 17h 04m | 16h 49m |
| Unique words | 9,635 | 17,384 |
| Sentences | 15,677 | 15,774 |
| Average sentence length | 16.3 words | 16 words |
| Reading grade | 8.7 | 7.7 |
| Reading ease | 61.9 | 68.6 |
| Long words | 12.8% | 10.7% |
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 = |255,991 − 252,249| = 3,742 words 3,742 ÷ 250 wpm = 15 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2 or The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)?
Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2 is longer — 255,991 words against 252,249 for The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6), a difference of 3,742 words or about 15 min of extra reading. Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2 is the harder read, at grade 8.7 against 7.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 46808 and no. 60230 — 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.
