Basic C++ problems

No.
You didn't define ch to always be wordfile[i]. C++ doesn't even have an easy way to do that, except as a macro, which is very highly frowned upon. You could use a pointer (char*) instead of an index, if you've learned how to do that.

Haven't learned indexes yet. In order for ch to always be defined as wordfile[i], can I just define it before the if statement like:

Code:

ch = wordfile[i];
        if (ch == '?' || ch == '.' || ch == ';' || ch == ':'||
            ch == '!' ) {
            ++sentencecount;
            ++i;
        }

And is there a reason why this text is affecting wordcount and lettercount even though they aren't determined by the same variables?