An established date after the last update
date-stamp-orderon by defaultJapanese / English
An established date later than the last update at the foot of a policy or terms
Example
How to fix
Check which is right, the established date or the update, and correct the other.
Why it matters
The "Established: April 1, 2023" and "Last updated: September 1, 2026" lines of a policy or terms say when the document was first set and when it was last changed. An established date after an update means the document was changed before it existed, and the reader cannot tell which date is right or how old the current version is. It happens when the dates of the previous version are rewritten and one is missed. Lines holding only a date and an established or updated word are read, and when the established date is later than an update both lines are reported: nothing tells which of the two is wrong.
What it does not flag
A line with anything besides the date and the stamp word (We adopted the policy on April 1, 2023) and a date without its year are not read. A line with two dates is read part by part, split at tabs and bars. Without both an established and an updated line nothing is said. Stamps seven lines or more apart are taken as the stamps of two documents in one file and are not compared. An effective date is not compared. A policy is often updated ahead of the day it takes effect, so an effective date after the update is normal.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L3
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- error
- 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 | error |
| relaxed | warning |
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
- Turned off by the genre in
- literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript
Message
The established date {established} is after the update {updated}
The update {updated} is before the established date {established}
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/date-stamp-order.yaml