All rules

Citations written in more than one style

citation-style-mixon by default (info)Japanese / English

A paper that cites as [1] in one place and as (Smith, 2020) in another

Example

Flagged
# Sleep and memory Sleep helps memories settle [1]. A short nap helps too [2]. Sleeping after study in the evening improves recall the next morning (Young, 2020). ## References - [1] Smith, A. Sleep. 2019. - [2] Jones, B. Naps. 2021. - [3] Young, C. Evening study. 2020.
What chaff prints
3:130 The citation "(Young, 2020)" is written differently from the paper's other citations ("[1]" and others, 2 in all)
Fixed
# Sleep and memory Sleep helps memories settle [1]. A short nap helps too [2]. Sleeping after study in the evening improves recall the next morning [3]. ## References - [1] Smith, A. Sleep. 2019. - [2] Jones, B. Naps. 2021. - [3] Young, C. Evening study. 2020.
What chaff prints
no finding
chaff.yaml used for this example
genre: academic/paper

How to fix

Rewrite it in the style most citations use. If that style is numbered, give the reference its number in the list too.

Why it matters

When one paper cites as [1] in some places and as (Smith, 2020) in others, the reader cannot tell which way to look up the reference list. It happens when text is moved from another manuscript, or when a co-author adds citations in their own style. chaff tells apart numbers in square brackets ([1]), numbers in tortoise-shell brackets (〔1〕), a number with a closing parenthesis after Japanese text (…である1)。), author and year ((Smith, 2020), Smith et al. (2020)) and footnotes whose note gives a year ([^1]), and points at the few citations that differ from the most common style. Which style is right is not decided.

What it does not flag

Citations inside the reference list or code, numbers at the start of a line (a numbered list), footnotes whose note gives no year, and a year after a month or a season ("(March 2020)") are not counted. When the minority style is used more than {limit} times, it is taken as a deliberate choice and not reported. Only the academic paper genre runs this rule.

Turning it off or relaxing it

Silence this one spot (in the document)
<!-- stet: citation-style-mix — reason -->
Relax it for the team (the reason is kept as a comment in chaff.yaml)
npx chaffjs relax citation-style-mix --why "reason"
Turn it off for the team (chaff.yaml)
rules: citation-style-mix: off
Technical details
Layer
L3
Status
stable
Severity
info
Languages
Japanese and English
Suited to
academic, legal, docs, 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 when the minority style appears 3 times or fewer
normalreported when the minority style appears 2 times or fewer
relaxedreported when the minority style appears 1 times or fewer

By genre

Runs by default in
academic/paper
Turned off by the genre in
legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript
Not suited to, and not run in
technical/spec, technical/readme, blog/tech, blog/essay, blog/owned-media, business/proposal, business/report, business/email, business/press-release, business/meeting-notes

Genres

Message

The citation "{citation}" is written differently from the paper's other citations ("{majority}" and others, {count} in all)

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/citation-style-mix.yaml