Sword and Pen vs A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3)
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,568words between them — 6 min of it
Sword and Pen is longer — 166,906 words against 165,338 for A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3), a difference of 1,568 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Sword and Pen is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 10.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Sword and Pen | A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Owens, John Algernon | Emerson, Edwin |
| Words | 166,906 | 165,338 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 11h 08m | 11h 01m |
| Unique words | 13,297 | 15,071 |
| Sentences | 6,004 | 8,611 |
| Average sentence length | 27.8 words | 19.2 words |
| Reading grade | 13.1 | 10.9 |
| Reading ease | 51 | 51.3 |
| Long words | 12.6% | 16.4% |
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 = |166,906 − 165,338| = 1,568 words 1,568 ÷ 250 wpm = 6 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Sword and Pen or A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3)?
Sword and Pen is longer — 166,906 words against 165,338 for A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3), a difference of 1,568 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Sword and Pen is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 10.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 28152 and no. 26901 — 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.
