All rules

Contraction use is inconsistent

contraction-consistencyon by default (info)English

The same word written both contracted ("don't") and in full ("do not")

Example

Flagged
We don't store your password. We don't read your messages. We don't share your data. We do not sell your address.
What chaff prints
1:86 "do not" is written "don't" elsewhere in the document
Fixed
We don't store your password. We don't read your messages. We don't share your data. We don't sell your address.
What chaff prints
no finding

How to fix

Write the same word the way the document mostly writes it.

Why it matters

Whether to use contractions is a choice of register, and neither is wrong. Mixed within one document, the reader re-measures the distance sentence by sentence.

What it does not flag

Whether to use contractions is not decided. Only the two forms of the same word are compared ("you're" with "you are"), never different words, so a document that writes "you're" but keeps "do not" in full is consistent. When both forms of a word appear as often, there is no minority and nothing is pointed at. A short phrase in quotation marks ("Do Not Disturb", ‘we’re going to x’) is a name or an example and is not counted.

Turning it off or relaxing it

Silence this one spot (in the document)
<!-- stet: contraction-consistency — reason -->
Relax it for the team (the reason is kept as a comment in chaff.yaml)
npx chaffjs relax contraction-consistency --why "reason"
Turn it off for the team (chaff.yaml)
rules: contraction-consistency: off
Technical details
Layer
L2
Status
stable
Severity
info
Languages
en
Suited to
blog, business, technical, 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 when the minority form of a word appears 4 times or fewer
normalreported when the minority form of a word appears 2 times or fewer
relaxedreported when the minority form of a word appears 1 times or fewer

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, legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper, speech/address
Turned off by the genre in
literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/transcript

Genres

Message

"{matched}" is written "{majority}" elsewhere in the document

This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/contraction-consistency.yaml