Length

How long are articles, and how has that changed?

Page length is computed as lastpage − firstpage + 1 for the 8,081 articles whose pagination is numeric. 464 articles (5.4%) — usually short front-matter with Roman-numeral pagination such as i, ii, iii — are excluded from this view.

Distribution of article lengths

(a)

(b)

Figure 1

Short pieces dominate — over half of articles run to five pages or fewer.

Length composition by topic

For each of the top ten topics, the share of articles in each length bin.

Figure 2

Letter and Errata skew very short; Article and Astronomical Observation are more bimodal, with a long tail of multi-dozen-page reports.

Median length over time

Figure 3

Typical article length grows substantially across the 18th and 19th centuries — a few pages in the earliest years, more like a dozen in the late 1800s.