Moby Dick vs Terminal Compromise
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
413words between them — 2 min of it
Moby Dick is longer — 213,380 words against 212,967 for Terminal Compromise, a difference of 413 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Moby Dick is the harder read, at grade 10.6 against 6.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Moby Dick | Terminal Compromise | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Melville, Herman | Schwartau, Winn |
| Words | 213,380 | 212,967 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 14h 14m | 14h 12m |
| Unique words | 18,600 | 16,074 |
| Sentences | 8,604 | 18,118 |
| Average sentence length | 24.8 words | 11.8 words |
| Reading grade | 10.6 | 6 |
| Reading ease | 63.1 | 73.1 |
| Long words | 8.9% | 10.5% |
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 = |213,380 − 212,967| = 413 words 413 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Moby Dick or Terminal Compromise?
Moby Dick is longer — 213,380 words against 212,967 for Terminal Compromise, a difference of 413 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Moby Dick is the harder read, at grade 10.6 against 6.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 2489 and no. 79 — 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.
