The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4) vs Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
230words between them — 1 min of it
The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4) is longer — 143,087 words against 142,857 for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, a difference of 230 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4) is the harder read, at grade 10.9 against 8.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4) | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Dent, John Charles | Verne, Jules |
| Words | 143,087 | 142,857 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 32m | 9h 31m |
| Unique words | 11,473 | 12,420 |
| Sentences | 6,912 | 7,838 |
| Average sentence length | 20.7 words | 18.2 words |
| Reading grade | 10.9 | 8.8 |
| Reading ease | 53.5 | 64.5 |
| Long words | 15% | 11.1% |
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 = |143,087 − 142,857| = 230 words 230 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4) or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas?
The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4) is longer — 143,087 words against 142,857 for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, a difference of 230 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4) is the harder read, at grade 10.9 against 8.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 35647 and no. 2488 — 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.
