points that are simultaneously awarded confuse my students

Question

I am awarding and subtracting points for checkbox type questions.
There might be multiple correct and multiple wrong answers.
For each correct answer, I am awarding one point, for each wrong answer, I am subtracting one point.
Because of how the points are shown, my students are all confused because the +1 symbol was shown last. However, "behind" that +1 symbol, there might have been two "-1" symbols, so they think there is a mistake in how the points are tallied, because they have 1 point fewer than before but the symbol they saw was +1.

Is there something to be done about that? Did I describe my problem clearly?

Answer 1

Ok, I think I thought of a solution myself. Didn't want to delete my post though, In case others find it useful.

I can have a running total of the points for a single question as a different variable and only award points at the end of the calculation by transferring the value of that variable to *points.