Question

how many terms are in abcd + e - fg + h 2

Answer 1

count the number of addition/subtraction operations, and add 1

Answer 2

a + b, has 1 operation, and 2 terms

ab + c - d^2, has 2 operations and 3 terms

etc ...

Answer 3

this of course would be a very basic way to assess it, in more complicated constructions like:

(a+b) - c/(d-1) ... we have to get a better feel for what an individual term is.

(a+b) is one term, and c/(d-1) is another. They are just factored form of a single term so its best to get a more rigorous concept then just counting the add/subtract operations in general