Your word count should be 48 not 47. The problem is with this line: 
$totalcount += (split(/ /) - 1);

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If a line begins with whitespace, then subtracting one is correct, but otherwise it isn't. A better way to do this is: 
$totalcount += split(' ');

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and then you don't have to check for blank lines.

Another simple way to perform the count: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -n
while (m/\w+/g) { $count++ }
END { print "count: $count\n" }

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In reply to Re: word count by pc88mxer
in thread word count by targetsmart

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