Date without a year
date-without-yearon by default (info)Japanese / English
A date with no year where the document's dates span years or cross a new year
Example
How to fix
Write the year (January 15, 2027).
Why it matters
When the document's dates span more than one year (some in 2025, some in 2026), a date without a year leaves the reader unable to tell which year it means. The same holds where the dates cross the turn of a year (December and January). When every dated date is in one year, the reader can tell the year without it.
What it does not flag
A document whose dated dates are all in one year is not reported, since the reader can tell the year. A document that writes the year once and the rest as month and day (more yearless dates than dated ones) is a style, and not reported either. In both, a date across the turn of a year is still reported. A date in a section whose heading names the year ("2026 events", "FY27-Q2") takes its year from the heading and is not reported. Nor is a month and day that carries an account forward right after two dates of one year ("April 9, 1952 … April 21, 1952 … on April 30 … May 12"). In minutes, a letter, a speech or a transcript (the genres of the dated_genres option) that carry their own date at the top ("January 17, 2024" under the title), a day and month within five months of that date takes the year that puts it there, and is not reported. Below a line that is only a date further down ("WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 2025", each sitting of a record of several), a day and month is read from that line's date instead; a date-only line that goes back in time (a report's date of last release) is not a sitting's. Nor is a date of no one year, such as a day that comes round every year ("every year on April 1", "each December 31", "March 1 of each calendar year", "the fiscal year end is March 31", "April 1 to March 31 of the following year", a whole year such as "January 1 to December 31") and a date in a worked example ("for example, a request received on April 1", the dates after "e.g.", a list item opening with "If" just after an example's item). A document with no dated date, and month-only and year-only dates, are not checked.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L1
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- info
- 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 | warning |
|---|---|
| normal | info |
| 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, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript
Message
"{date}" has no year, and the document's dates run from {from} to {to}, so the year is unclear
"{date}" has no year, and the dates around it cross the turn of a year
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/date-without-year.yaml