All rules

Shouting in capitals

all-caps-shoutingon by default (info)English

Ordinary words run together in capitals, such as "DO NOT DELETE THIS"

Example

Flagged
Do not delete the log. DO NOT DELETE THIS FILE before the audit.
What chaff prints
1:24 "DO NOT DELETE THIS FILE" is written in capitals
Fixed
Do not delete the log. Do not delete this file before the audit.
What chaff prints
no finding

How to fix

Write it in ordinary case; to stress it, use bold or say why it matters.

Why it matters

Three or more ordinary words in capitals ("DO NOT DELETE THIS") read as shouting, and words in capitals are slower to read. To tell them from a run of acronyms (AWS IAM SSO), a run is reported only when at least half its words also appear in lower case elsewhere in the document.

What it does not flag

Only runs of three or more words. Runs of acronyms (words never written in lower case elsewhere) and code are not reported, and MUST or SHALL in a specification count as conventional capitals. A caption in capitals that opens a paragraph and ends in a colon or stands alone ("AGENCY:", "WORKING GROUP MEMBERS"), and prose naming such a caption, are not reported either. Nor is a paragraph whose lines are all in capitals and end no sentence, such as a letterhead, an addressee block ("BOARD OF GOVERNORS") or a heading a transcript sets on a line of its own ("OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JANE DOE,"), nor a roster entry that gives a name in capitals and the place or office in ordinary case ("JANE Q. DOE, Ohio"). The legal and literature presets turn it off, since contracts set disclaimers in capitals by rule and older texts set titles that way.

Turning it off or relaxing it

Silence this one spot (in the document)
<!-- stet: all-caps-shouting — reason -->
Relax it for the team (the reason is kept as a comment in chaff.yaml)
npx chaffjs relax all-caps-shouting --why "reason"
Turn it off for the team (chaff.yaml)
rules: all-caps-shouting: off
Technical details
Layer
L1
Status
stable
Severity
info
Languages
en
Suited to
business, technical, blog, legal, docs, academic, literature, speech

Levels

Set a level for this rule under rules in chaff.yaml. With nothing set, it runs at the level its genre gives it (see By genre below).

strictreported once there are 1
normalreported once there are 1
relaxedreported once there are 2

By genre

Runs by default in
technical/spec, technical/readme, blog/tech, blog/essay, blog/owned-media, business/proposal, business/report, business/email, business/press-release, business/meeting-notes, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper, speech/address, speech/transcript
Turned off by the genre in
legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play

Genres

Message

"{matched}" is written in capitals

Rewrite depth (chaff fix-plan --depth): light — words and sentences; the structure and the voice stay

This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/all-caps-shouting.yaml