The Heather-Moon vs Doctor Cupid
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
545words between them — 2 min of it
The Heather-Moon is longer — 124,000 words against 123,455 for Doctor Cupid, a difference of 545 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Doctor Cupid is the harder read, at grade 8.9 against 7.5.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Heather-Moon | Doctor Cupid | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Williamson, C. N. (Charles Norris) | Broughton, Rhoda |
| Words | 124,000 | 123,455 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 16m | 8h 14m |
| Unique words | 9,701 | 11,769 |
| Sentences | 6,536 | 5,736 |
| Average sentence length | 19 words | 21.5 words |
| Reading grade | 7.5 | 8.9 |
| Reading ease | 75.4 | 69.4 |
| Long words | 6.6% | 7.7% |
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 = |124,000 − 123,455| = 545 words 545 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Heather-Moon or Doctor Cupid?
The Heather-Moon is longer — 124,000 words against 123,455 for Doctor Cupid, a difference of 545 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Doctor Cupid is the harder read, at grade 8.9 against 7.5.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 19742 and no. 35548 — 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.
