[OS X TeX] Word count algorithm

[Matthew Inglis]

Hello,

I am curious about the procedure TeXShop uses (or teTeX uses) to  
produce a word count. For example, I am currently working on a  
document (mostly text, few formulae) and have used two methods of  
getting a word count:

(i) TeXShop's in built "Statistics..." panel.
(ii) copy and pasting everything from the output pdf into Word and  
using its word count.

The first gives a figure of 37192 and the second gives a figure of  
52063. Now I realise that word counts are only ever estimates, but  
the size of this difference seems extraordinary. Even after deleting  
the bibliography and contents from the Word file, the figure is still  
over 10,000 higher than TeX's.

I'm not worried about this, just curious. Can anyone explain it?

Best wishes

Matthew.


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