Sword and Pen vs The Parables of Our Lord
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
520words between them — 2 min of it
Sword and Pen is longer — 166,906 words against 166,386 for The Parables of Our Lord, a difference of 520 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Sword and Pen is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 12.2.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Sword and Pen | The Parables of Our Lord | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Owens, John Algernon | Arnot, William |
| Words | 166,906 | 166,386 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 11h 08m | 11h 06m |
| Unique words | 13,297 | 10,602 |
| Sentences | 6,004 | 6,004 |
| Average sentence length | 27.8 words | 27.7 words |
| Reading grade | 13.1 | 12.2 |
| Reading ease | 51 | 57.2 |
| Long words | 12.6% | 11% |
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 − 166,386| = 520 words 520 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Sword and Pen or The Parables of Our Lord?
Sword and Pen is longer — 166,906 words against 166,386 for The Parables of Our Lord, a difference of 520 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Sword and Pen is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 12.2.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 28152 and no. 21328 — 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.
