Plus figure: a lower bound that never goes out of date
A plus figure is a count written as a lower bound. It is the commonest way a language claim is stated in this category, and it is the form least likely ever to need editing, because a product that grows does not make it false. As of 2026-09-22.
| Property | A plain figure | A figure with a plus |
|---|---|---|
| Can become wrong as a product grows | Yes | No |
| Comparable between two vendors | Roughly | No |
| Invites the reader to assume more | No | Yes |
| Needs maintenance | Yes | Never |
Inclusion rule. The two ways a count can be written, compared on how the claim behaves over time rather than on what it says today. Order. Fixed order, the plain form first.
1A claim engineered never to be false
Say a product covers a hundred languages and the sentence goes stale when the hundred-and-first is added, or becomes wrong if one is removed. Say more than a hundred and neither event touches it.
That is good copywriting and poor disclosure. The sentence survives every change to the product, which means its presence on a page is no evidence at all that anybody has looked at the product recently.
2Two plus figures are not comparable
One vendor writing more than a hundred and twenty and another writing more than a hundred and thirty-five may have inventories that differ by one language or by fifty. Both sentences are true across a wide range.
So ranking a column of plus figures produces an ordering with no defensible meaning. This register prints them as published and does not sort the column by them.
3Where it sits beside a list, quote the list
Several vendors here print a plus figure above documentation that names entries. Where the two disagree, the list is the reproducible figure and the plus figure is the unverifiable one.
One vendor prints two different plus figures on one page. Another prints figures lower than its own published list. Both cases are recorded with their pages, because the gap between a headline and a list is itself a finding.
A definition, not a measurement: no vendor figure appears here that is not also in the register. Every headline figure in the register is recorded beside the list it sits above.
Nearby terms: Bare count, Printed total. The whole vocabulary is at terms; nothing on this page is a claim about a named product.