Question about repeat notation

I'm writing a piece which has a lot of sections which are repeated exactly and what I have are the repeat signs with a little "3x" or "4x" or whatever above them to show how many times to repeat them, but it occurred to me that perhaps they could be interpreted as "PLAY 3 times" rather than "REPEAT 3 times" (which would equal 4 complete playings). Is there a standard for this or should I just write a performance note to clarify?

How about you stop writing this minimalistic crap you talentless hack.

I would interpret a x3 above a measure between two repeat signs as playing it three times. There's no harm in adding a performance note to clarify, though.

I would place a note like "play 3x" above (but directly before) the right repeat bracket to avoid confusion, and you shouldn't need any other notation (aside from the repeat brackets) to get the idea across. I don't know if I'd say there's a standard, but what I listed is pretty common.

whenever there's an "x" above the repeat, I'd be confused. Unless there's a number ending, I've never seen that before.

whenever there's an "x" above the beginning of the section, I ALWAYS interpret it as the number of times I play the section, not the number of times I repeat it.

Half the time, I see the x above the beginning of the section which says "repeat 3x" or "play 4x." That's obviously clear. So why not do that?

:)

oh that's a lot clearer, thanks, I'll go with "play 4x" then.