On the Cross vs Sword and Pen
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,105words between them — 4 min of it
On the Cross is longer — 168,011 words against 166,906 for Sword and Pen, a difference of 1,105 words or about 4 min of extra reading. Sword and Pen is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 8.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| On the Cross | Sword and Pen | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Hillern, Wilhelmine von | Owens, John Algernon |
| Words | 168,011 | 166,906 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 11h 12m | 11h 08m |
| Unique words | 12,476 | 13,297 |
| Sentences | 7,982 | 6,004 |
| Average sentence length | 21 words | 27.8 words |
| Reading grade | 8.9 | 13.1 |
| Reading ease | 68.4 | 51 |
| Long words | 8.4% | 12.6% |
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 = |168,011 − 166,906| = 1,105 words 1,105 ÷ 250 wpm = 4 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, On the Cross or Sword and Pen?
On the Cross is longer — 168,011 words against 166,906 for Sword and Pen, a difference of 1,105 words or about 4 min of extra reading. Sword and Pen is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 8.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 36725 and no. 28152 — 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.
