The following function can be used to get the number of words in a string.
  Call the function like ShowMessage(IntToStr(GetWordCount('test string, 1 2 3')));
1   
2     //Function starts here
3     function GetWordCount(const SourceStr: string): Longint;
4     var
5       i, len: Longint;
6       WordSeparators: string;
7     begin
8       Result := 0;
9       WordSeparators := ' ,.;'; { If needed then add more string separators }
10      i := 1;
11      len := Length(SourceStr); { Get the length of source string and assign to a 
12  variable }
13      while i <= len do
14      begin
15        if Pos(SourceStr[i], WordSeparators) = 0 then
16        { i.e  currenct char is a valid word character like a, b, c etc. }
17        begin
18          { Enter a loop that will end if a word separator charcter like ., space 
19  etc. found }
20          while (i <= len) and (Pos(SourceStr[i], WordSeparators) = 0) do
21            Inc(i);
22          Inc(Result);
23        end;
24        Inc(i);
25      end;
26    end;