diff --git a/bin/plotcounts.py b/bin/plotcounts.py
index 86e8e544d3a77f2edf846a98070b21b3d65e119f..91d5350c6d6cac17c9f35688a8376951313e4200 100755
--- a/bin/plotcounts.py
+++ b/bin/plotcounts.py
@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ def main(args):
         save_configuration(args.saveconfig, mpl.rcParams)
     df = pd.read_csv(args.infile, header=None,
                      names=('word', 'word_frequency'))
-    df['rank'] = df['word_frequency'].rank(ascending=False,
+    df['rank'] = df['word_frequency'].rank(ascending=True,
                                            method='max')
     ax = df.plot.scatter(x='word_frequency',
                          y='rank', loglog=True,