The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn vs Sword and Pen
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
383words between them — 2 min of it
The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn is longer — 167,289 words against 166,906 for Sword and Pen, a difference of 383 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Sword and Pen is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 10.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn | Sword and Pen | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Johnston, Henry Phelps | Owens, John Algernon |
| Words | 167,289 | 166,906 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 11h 09m | 11h 08m |
| Unique words | 10,349 | 13,297 |
| Sentences | 7,975 | 6,004 |
| Average sentence length | 21 words | 27.8 words |
| Reading grade | 10 | 13.1 |
| Reading ease | 60.9 | 51 |
| Long words | 11.6% | 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 = |167,289 − 166,906| = 383 words 383 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn or Sword and Pen?
The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn is longer — 167,289 words against 166,906 for Sword and Pen, a difference of 383 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Sword and Pen is the harder read, at grade 13.1 against 10.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 21990 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.
