The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political vs The Anabasis of Alexander
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
263words between them — 1 min of it
The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political is longer — 142,224 words against 141,961 for The Anabasis of Alexander, a difference of 263 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Anabasis of Alexander is the harder read, at grade 8.5 against 7.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political | The Anabasis of Alexander | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Lane, Franklin K. | Arrian |
| Words | 142,224 | 141,961 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 29m | 9h 28m |
| Unique words | 11,615 | 9,890 |
| Sentences | 8,464 | 8,526 |
| Average sentence length | 16.8 words | 16.7 words |
| Reading grade | 7.7 | 8.5 |
| Reading ease | 69.6 | 63.6 |
| Long words | 10.7% | 12% |
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 = |142,224 − 141,961| = 263 words 263 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political or The Anabasis of Alexander?
The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political is longer — 142,224 words against 141,961 for The Anabasis of Alexander, a difference of 263 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Anabasis of Alexander is the harder read, at grade 8.5 against 7.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 4206 and no. 46976 — 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.
