Royal Edinburgh vs The Economic Aspect of Geology
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,530words between them — 6 min of it
Royal Edinburgh is longer — 158,596 words against 157,066 for The Economic Aspect of Geology, a difference of 1,530 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Royal Edinburgh is the harder read, at grade 18 against 13.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Royal Edinburgh | The Economic Aspect of Geology | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret) | Leith, C. K. (Charles Kenneth) |
| Words | 158,596 | 157,066 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 10h 34m | 10h 28m |
| Unique words | 13,239 | 8,144 |
| Sentences | 3,758 | 6,567 |
| Average sentence length | 42.2 words | 23.9 words |
| Reading grade | 18 | 13.8 |
| Reading ease | 41 | 38.8 |
| Long words | 11.3% | 20.3% |
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 = |158,596 − 157,066| = 1,530 words 1,530 ÷ 250 wpm = 6 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Royal Edinburgh or The Economic Aspect of Geology?
Royal Edinburgh is longer — 158,596 words against 157,066 for The Economic Aspect of Geology, a difference of 1,530 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Royal Edinburgh is the harder read, at grade 18 against 13.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 25701 and no. 27842 — 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.
