A period that ends before it starts
date-range-reversedon by defaultJapanese / English
A period whose end date comes before its start date
Example
How to fix
Check both dates and correct the one that is wrong.
Why it matters
When a period such as "5 April 2026 – 2 April 2026" ends before it starts, the reader has to ask which date is right. It happens when a year is copied wrong, or when only one of the two dates is changed. Two dates are read as a period when only a range mark (–, —) or a word such as "through" or "until" stands between them, or when they are written "from … to …", or when one sentence gives the start and the end with one start word and one end word on the two dates ("starts on 1 April 2026 and ends on 31 March 2027"). A period without a year ("28 December – 4 January") may run into the next year and is not compared. With the year on one end only ("July 9 – July 8, 2026"), both ends are read in that year; a reversed one is reported only when the weekday on the end without a year matches that reading, or when reading it across the year end would make the period nearly a year long ("December 28 – January 4, 2027" crosses the year end).
What it does not flag
A period without a year, "from … to …" in a sentence with a word that changes a date ("moved from March 10 to March 3", "… was postponed"), two dates with words between them, and a sentence with two start words or two end words ("starts on … and phase 2 starts on …") are not compared.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L3
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- warning
- Languages
- Japanese and English
- Suited to
- business, technical, blog, legal, docs, academic, literature, speech
- Reads from the document
- dates
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).
| strict | error |
|---|---|
| normal | warning |
| relaxed | info |
This rule has no limit to count to. A level sets how a finding is marked: relaxed keeps the finding and marks it a step lower.
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, speech/transcript
- Turned off by the genre in
- literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play
Message
The period "{period}" ends before it starts
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/date-range-reversed.yaml