On Particle Multiplicities in Three-jet Events

A thorough verification of the distinct differences in the properties of quark and gluon jets is considered as one of the most instructive tests of the basic ideas of QCD. In the real life experiments such a comparison appears to be quite a delicate task and various subtle issues require further theoretical efforts. In this paper we discuss in detail the possibility to extract the theoretically adequate information from the particle multiplicity patterns in three-jet events in e+e- annihilation.