Communication Fail

How hard is X > Y > Z to understand? Someone tell me, because I used that exact format to try to communicate a concept on a forum, almost exactly as you see it there. Somehow I keep getting responses akin to:

"So basically X is the largest, then Y, then Z? What about if we're doing subtraction instead of addition?"

"Okay, so if I want to subtract one of these numbers from another of these numbers and get a negative number, which numbers do I subtract from each other?"

"Which is bigger, X or Z?"

Those are just the posts which seem to have bothered to read my maxim. I am going to cry myself to sleep tonight if I see one more person post who doesn't understand the concept of the "greater than" symbol.