Text Length in Prose Writing

[ken tao]

When I was in high school I said to a friend while finishing a book that I had read it cover to cover. He reprimanded me saying that there is no universal way of describing a book length. This got me to thinking. Later on when I set a goal to read 1000 books this issue came up. After looking at many book layouts things became even more confusing.
.....Then by circumstance I entered 100,000 in my calculator and took the square root which is 316,22776. I figured a standard book most likely to be 316 pages with 316 words per page. Over the long haul of a lifetime reading plan the 101 page book and the 1001 page books average out. A book like Remembrance of Things Past may be considered 10 book lengths, whereas The Pearl only 1/3 of a book length.
.....Furthermore books have different line lengths. Using the typing standard of 5 letters per word, a book may have from 5 to 15 words (including spacing and punctuation) per line with some lines only one word at the end of a paragraph. Pages may be as much as a thousand words in two column folio, or one word carry over page. There are also various punctuation place holders, title pages, and subtitles. So when I tried to quantify a book I'd multiply words-per-line, actual lines-per-page, and actual pages-per-book. I would then arrive at an estimate of total words in the book. Then I would say I read a book at so many standard book lengths.
....I would be interested to hear whether other people have made up a system for quantifying their general reading list.RSVP

[ken tao]

---Quantity Not Quality---Of course reading is a qualitative experience. A monkey flipping pages all its life may be the world’s most prolific reader. Reading is much more than just putting eyes to text. We all as readers have varying levels of concentration at different times on different book topics. However, reading comprehension, and enjoyment are not easy to qualify.
…..On the other hand the quantity of our reading is easy to quantify. If we are interested in statistics of what we read it’s simple math. Based on the idea that a standard book length is 100,000 words, I might say, that if I read a thousand books, I’ve read 100,000,000 words in my lifetime reading plan. A book critic might read as much as a billion words during his professional career. For instance, the book critic may read an average of 100,000 words a day for 10,000 days or 27.3 years, If she has been reading this way from age 10 to 95 she may have read over three billion words!
....If an average reader such as myself is content to have read 1000 books, does a professional book reviewer need to read 30,000 books to survive in his career?
....Getting back to the monkey analogy, if a computer scans pages at a million words per minute, can it read a billion words in a day? But in what way do we qualify whether or not the computer is reading with comprehension?

[Polonus]

I'd like to draw your attention to one more, obvious aspect of Length in Prose.

The times are gone when readers would indulge in reading a three volume novel. (sort of A. Dumas and company). A good readable novel is the one that you can "swallow" on board a plane travelling from, say, London to Rio. Just 130 pages. People are too busy now to sit by the fireplace in long winter evenings and listen to daddy reading to the chlidren....
"Chapter XXIX, in which the reader will learn how Prince Ivanov on entering his mansion house met Lady Petrova and what they planned to do with Igor whose wife Elizabeta decided to ......"

[ken tao]

Good point, Polonus. Probably our most intense moments in reading are the illuminating spots we get from news clips, or the fun moments we get from comics, or illustrations.
.....Wading through great classics at times seemed to me mere eye chart exercises. But at the same time I have vivid recollections from great literature, which have given me a broader prospective of our culture, and settled if not improved my way of thinking.
.....In my case the quantitative approach was a way to challenge myself to stay the course. Kind of like buying the white board and marker, before putting any content up.

[monica224]

What are different lengths of stories classified as?
I have several stories, cialis ranging in length from 9,000 words to 22,000.At what point is it no longer a short story?

[ILuvEire]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_of_ ... In_fiction

Your pieces would probably all be considered novellas. It depends on the publisher what it would be considered, and not everyone had the novelette classification.

[Saaropean]

I'd like to draw your attention to one more, obvious aspect of Length in Prose.

The times are gone when readers would indulge in reading a three volume novel. (sort of A. Dumas and company). A good readable novel is the one that you can "swallow" on board a plane travelling from, say, London to Rio. Just 130 pages.

I disagree. I read my novels on the way to and from work, a few pages every day, and I finish them, no matter whether they have 200 pages or 800. Sometimes I spend parts of the week-ends reading, too. Whenever I'm on a bus or train (i.e., very frequently, even when I'm not going to/from work), I'm reading books on my e-book reader.

People are too busy now to sit by the fireplace in long winter evenings and listen to daddy reading to the children....

I don't waste my time watching TV, so I have time to read books.

[linguoboy]

The times are gone when readers would indulge in reading a three volume novel. (sort of A. Dumas and company). A good readable novel is the one that you can "swallow" on board a plane travelling from, say, London to Rio. Just 130 pages.

I disagree. I read my novels on the way to and from work, a few pages every day, and I finish them, no matter whether they have 200 pages or 800. Sometimes I spend parts of the week-ends reading, too. Whenever I'm on a bus or train (i.e., very frequently, even when I'm not going to/from work), I'm reading books on my e-book reader.

Polonus isn't here any more, but I wonder if he wasn't being at least somewhat sarcastic. Clearly he doesn't know anyone who reads science fiction or fantasy; my partner does, and I think all the major paperback publishers have a "Tolkien rule" which requires that every novel be padded out to three volumes at a minimum. It's all trilogies and tetralogies--and none of the individual books are less than 300 pages.

[Johanna]

Polonus isn't here any more, but I wonder if he wasn't being at least somewhat sarcastic. Clearly he doesn't know anyone who reads science fiction or fantasy; my partner does, and I think all the major paperback publishers have a "Tolkien rule" which requires that every novel be padded out to three volumes at a minimum. It's all trilogies and tetralogies--and none of the individual books are less than 300 pages.

Oh yes, most fantasy readers around here are very disappointed if a book is one single novel and not part of a series, and 300 pages is a very thin volume. We import most of ours from the Anglo-Saxon world btw.

[Hoogstwaarschijnlijk]

Polonus is right though that people in general are used to things that don't take much time. Television shows are only one hour, or less. Newspaper articles are short. On the internet every text is short. So books tend to become shorter as well. Though not too short, a publisher wants the book to be big enough to be recognised and that's difficult when it's barely visible due to shortage of pages. So 150-300 pages is perfect. For fantasy this is slightly different indeed, I think fantasy readers are very distinguished