The Declaration of Independence / The Constitution of the United States

Published 1998 · 112 pages · 30,800 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Politics & Society, History, Nonfiction

How hard is The Declaration of Independence / The Constitution of the United States to read?

The Declaration of Independence / The Constitution of the United States scores 46 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
Both documents use formal 18th-century English and legal terms such as "emoluments," "impeachment," "habeas corpus" and "usurpations." The diction is stately but limited in range, far more approachable than Moby-Dick's whaling lexicon and more formal than The Great Gatsby.
Sentence structure: 62 out of 100
Jefferson's opening is one long periodic sentence, and the grievance list stacks clauses beginning "He has..." The Constitution's clauses nest conditions and exceptions, though each sentence stays logical and bounded, nothing like Henry James's hypotaxis.
Abstraction: 66 out of 100
The Declaration rests on abstract claims about natural rights, consent and the purpose of government. The Constitution is concrete in its procedures, such as terms of office, vote counts and powers, so the pair sits between pure philosophy and everyday narrative.
Information density: 62 out of 100
At roughly 30,000 words, every clause of the Constitution assigns a power, a limit or a procedure, and the Amendments add new rules. The Declaration is compact and rhetorical, but the Constitution packs in far more discrete provisions than a narrative page would.

How The Declaration of Independence / The Constitution of the United States is regarded

The Declaration of Independence / The Constitution of the United States holds a literary regard score of 94 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.