It was hypothesized (based on Hasan’s (1984) analysis) that some chains have a more relevant role in the text than others. Before knowing whether such a distinction can be made or is relevant, it is difficult to determine the exact number of ties in a chain that would distinguish between long and short chains. For the present exploratory intent, it seemed appropriate to approach the question from two angles: from the shortest and longest chains. First, it was observed that a very high proportion of chains consist of no more than two ties (the presupposed item with one or two items pointing to it). Secondly, chains consisting of more than two ties appeared to encompass text segments beyond paragraph boundaries. For this reason, in the examination of long chains consisting of fewer than two ties were eliminated. It was established that for the present purposes long chains are all those chains of cohesive reference where two or more cohesive referring items make reference to the same presupposed item, and therefore consist of at least two cohesive ties. From the other perspective – that is, the longest chains in texts – we found that they play a special role in the construction of the text. An in-depth analysis of the presupposed items (or main referents) of the 10 longest chains in RAs, showed that out of the referents of the 8 longest chains in each RA, on average, 6 were already present in the abstract. However, it is not immediately obvious from the RCA table, as the first item of these long chains may not appear in the rows representing the abstract but may come later in the text as a result of lexical repetition, which we did not analyze here. This phenomenon indeed shows that it may be logical to analyze some types of repetition as a form of co-reference within reference analysis. Whether or how it might be achieved though, points far beyond the scope of this research.