Double negative
double-negativeon by default (info)Japanese / English
A negative negated, such as "not uncommon" or "not unlike"
Example
How to fix
Say it positively ("common", "similar to"), or say how far it holds ("in about a third of cases").
Why it matters
Negating a negative ("not uncommon", "not unlike") makes the reader turn the sentence over twice, and blurs which way the writer leans. If the claim holds, say it positively; if it only partly holds, say how far. "not without" is not counted, since "do not enter without a badge" is a plain prohibition. The phrases are listed in each language's lexicon.
What it does not flag
Fixed forms such as "not without" are not reported. The legal, literature and speech presets turn it off, since the hedged form is part of how those are written.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L2
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- info
- Languages
- Japanese and English
- Suited to
- business, technical, blog, 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).
| strict | reported once 1 sentences hold one |
|---|---|
| normal | reported once 1 sentences hold one |
| relaxed | reported once 2 sentences hold one |
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, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper
- Turned off by the genre in
- legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript
Message
"{matched}" is a double negative
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/double-negative.yaml