Dear all,

Is anyone out there using WordSmith's tagging facilities?  If so, perhaps 
you can help...

I am trying to analyse the speeches of different characters in 
Shakepseare's Othello.  To this end I have removed the stage directions 
and tagged all the speeches of the play (eg. <OTH> words of the speech 
<\OTH>).  

I have made a wordlist of the whole play, and have then gone to Tools 
Settings / Tags and Mark Up / Sections to Keep / Selecting Within Texts / 
Only Part of File, in order to a) isolate for analysis the speeches of 
certain characters, and b)remove the speeches of certain characters for 
comparison with those single character files. 

The problem I am having is that although the procedure seems to work okay, 
the wordlists produced have total numbers that do not tally.  So, for 
example, the whole play total is 3,764 words; Iago's total is given as 
1,910, and Othello's 1,651.  Always assuming that these are correct 
(although it does seem to leave the remaining characters a very small 
proportion), when I then remove, say, Othello's speeches (by the same 
means - the dialogue box has the facility to select or remove), the 
remaining word total does not equal what should be the whole play total 
minus the given Othello total.

Has anyone got any idea why this could be happening?  Is there a setting 
that could be interfering with the results?  Am I perhaps doing something 
wrong?

I'd be glad to hear of any ideas - my research is well and truly stuck 
unless I can resolve this problem.

Jacquie Mullender (Birmingham)