 In the plane, this just means translating the curve in some direction, but in general one talks about taking a curve that is linearly equivalent to , and counting the intersection , thus obtaining an intersection number, denoted .Note that "unlike" for distinct curves and , the "actual points of intersection" are not defined, because they depend on a choice of , but the “self intersection points of can be interpreted as generic points on , where .More properly, the self-intersection point of is "the" generic point of , taken with multiplicity .