Let and be the finite sets of objects satisfying the two properties. The rule of sum says that mutually exclusive alternatives have additive counts: if , then . Without disjointness, the corresponding inclusion-exclusion principle is
The rule of subtraction counts objects satisfying the first property but not the second:
In particular, if the objects with the second property form a subset of those with the first, the count is . These conditions prevent either double counting an overlap or subtracting objects that were not counted initially.