Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1 vs A Tale of Two Cities
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
424words between them — 2 min of it
Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1 is longer — 136,420 words against 135,996 for A Tale of Two Cities, a difference of 424 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1 is the harder read, at grade 13.3 against 8.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1 | A Tale of Two Cities | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Mahan, A. T. (Alfred Thayer) | Dickens, Charles |
| Words | 136,420 | 135,996 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 06m | 9h 04m |
| Unique words | 9,283 | 10,649 |
| Sentences | 5,388 | 6,255 |
| Average sentence length | 25.3 words | 21.7 words |
| Reading grade | 13.3 | 8.9 |
| Reading ease | 44.6 | 69.8 |
| Long words | 16.4% | 7.6% |
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 = |136,420 − 135,996| = 424 words 424 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1 or A Tale of Two Cities?
Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1 is longer — 136,420 words against 135,996 for A Tale of Two Cities, a difference of 424 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1 is the harder read, at grade 13.3 against 8.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 25911 and no. 98 — 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.
