Novel, novella, short story -- how to distinguish


Even for English speakers, the lines between novel, novella, and short story
are not clear-cut. Wikipedia has 17,500 to 40,000 words as a novella, and
7,500–17,500 as a novelette; anything shorter is a short story. (It may be a
generational thing, but novelette is less familiar to me.)

In Japanese dictionaries, I see both 短編小説 and 中編小説 for novella. At first
glance, 中編小説 would be the better choice; but is this word used in everyday
speech? And indeed, for short story, is 短編小説 more common than ショートストーリー?.

Also, I'm not familiar enough with Japanese literature and culture to know how
those traditions affect terminology for historically Western texts. Are 一夕話
and コント used also for short story?




中編小説 would be understood, but for most people, it does not mean any specific
length. In ordinary speech, there is mostly just a distinction between 小説 and
短編小説. That should be why novella is translated as 短編小説, meaning what is
shorter than full novels.

There is no standard for the lengths of novels. According to web searches
([site 1](https://www.yu-hanami.com/entry/2018/02/19/170200), [site
2](https://asanoajisai.com/classification-of-novels)), the following seems
common.

  * 長編: 300> sheets
  * 中編: 100-300 sheets
  * 短編: 10-100 sheets,

where 'sheet' refers to [a special paper for
compositions](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8E%9F%E7%A8%BF%E7%94%A8%E7%B4%99)
that contains 400 characters per sheet.

Anything shorter would be called ショートショート, 掌編小説 etc.

* * *

一夕話 is not current, and コント means exclusively a type of comic performance
(short comic drama).




中編小説 would be understood, but for most people, it does not mean any specific
length. In ordinary speech, there is mostly just a distinction between 小説 and
短編小説. That should be why novella is translated as 短編小説, meaning what is
shorter than full novels.

There is no standard for the lengths of novels. According to web searches
([site 1](https://www.yu-hanami.com/entry/2018/02/19/170200), [site
2](https://asanoajisai.com/classification-of-novels)), the following seems
common.

  * 長編: 300> sheets
  * 中編: 100-300 sheets
  * 短編: 10-100 sheets,

where 'sheet' refers to [a special paper for
compositions](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8E%9F%E7%A8%BF%E7%94%A8%E7%B4%99)
that contains 400 characters per sheet.

Anything shorter would be called ショートショート, 掌編小説 etc.

* * *

一夕話 is not current, and コント means exclusively a type of comic performance
(short comic drama).

