Hovering over the Quick Search field gives total project word count and daily word count – a very useful feature. However, there seems to be a strange bug: if I cut a section of text and then paste the same, unedited text elsewhere in the window – a net zero addition to the daily count – I get the number of pasted words added to the daily total. This doesn’t affect the project total, or the daily word count in the Writing History box. It also only happens the first time I do it on a particular day: subsequent cut-and-paste text does not affect the daily count in the Quick Search field. The next day, the ‘first cut-and-paste’ bug reappears. Bizarre! And annoying, because the feature loses its utility for the rest of the day.
That is likely due to you having “allow negatives” unchecked in the project target’s session’s options.
Given the count starts at zero, has then no way to weigh in the text you’ve cut, and then you paste the text back.
It does the same under windows.
It does it only the first time because after that one time the session’s count has a positive (>0) to substract the cut from.
It would do it a second time should you cut and paste a bigger chunk of text than you did the first time.
If you check the option to allow negatives, that should fix it for you.
(Options panel of the project targets’ popup) :
Also note that, unless you’ve checked “Count text written anywhere…”, if you cut words from a document that is not included in compile to a document that is (or vice versa), you’ll also get a count that looks off.
Perhaps in those cases you’d get a more accurate picture of your day’s work from Writing History.
You can also trust that you are moving forward with your project, and that even if you get a tiny or negative count one day (with the option to allow negatives checked, of course), those were cuts that had to be done eventually anyways…
That’s how I look at things personally. 
Some people (I assume) prefer to strikethrough text, rather than deleting it, so that it doesn’t count as a negative.
You can later clean up / delete strikethrough text → Edit/Text Tidying submenu.
If you clean up strikethrough text at the end of the day, you’ll have the pleasure of a higher word count for your session (input only), with no impact on your next day’s wordcount.
Great! Thanks, V_V, that fixed it!
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