The Man Who Did the Right Thing vs Biographia Literaria
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
508words between them — 2 min of it
The Man Who Did the Right Thing is longer — 138,937 words against 138,429 for Biographia Literaria, a difference of 508 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Biographia Literaria is the harder read, at grade 15 against 8.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Man Who Did the Right Thing | Biographia Literaria | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Johnston, Harry | Coleridge, Samuel Taylor |
| Words | 138,937 | 138,429 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 16m | 9h 14m |
| Unique words | 13,833 | 14,672 |
| Sentences | 6,956 | 4,277 |
| Average sentence length | 20 words | 32.4 words |
| Reading grade | 8.9 | 15 |
| Reading ease | 66.8 | 45.2 |
| Long words | 9.5% | 13.6% |
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 = |138,937 − 138,429| = 508 words 508 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Man Who Did the Right Thing or Biographia Literaria?
The Man Who Did the Right Thing is longer — 138,937 words against 138,429 for Biographia Literaria, a difference of 508 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Biographia Literaria is the harder read, at grade 15 against 8.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 45451 and no. 6081 — 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.
