Headings decorated with emoji

emoji-headingon by default (info)Japanese / English

Headings with an emoji in them ("## 🚀 Getting started"), one after another

Example

Flagged

# Counting stock ## 🚀 Getting started We count the stock in the warehouse every morning. ## 🛠️ Steps Count shelf by shelf and write it in the sheet. ## ✅ Summary When the count is done, share the sheet.

What chaff prints

3:1 Heading "🚀 Getting started" has an emoji (3 headings with one, 3 needed) 7:1 Heading "🛠️ Steps" has an emoji (3 headings with one, 3 needed) 11:1 Heading "✅ Summary" has an emoji (3 headings with one, 3 needed)

Fixed

# Counting stock ## Getting started We count the stock in the warehouse every morning. ## Steps Count shelf by shelf and write it in the sheet. ## After the count When the count is done, share the sheet.

What chaff prints

no finding

chaff.yaml used for this example

genre: blog/tech

How to fix

Take the emoji out of the headings and let the words say what the section holds. If one heading really needs a marker, keep that one.

Why it matters

A heading with an emoji in it ("## 🚀 Getting started", "## ✅ Summary"), heading after heading. When every heading has one, the emoji says nothing about the section, and the table of contents and a screen reader get a row of meaningless symbols. A shape common in generated text.

What it does not flag

Fewer headings than the level needs are not reported, nor symbols not drawn as emoji (→, ™). Documentation, legal, academic and literary genres do not run this rule.

Turning it off or relaxing it

Silence this one spot (in the document)

Relax it for the team (the reason is kept as a comment in chaff.yaml)

npx chaffjs relax emoji-heading --why "reason"

Turn it off for the team (chaff.yaml)

rules: emoji-heading: off

Technical details

Layer: L1
Status: stable
Severity: info
Languages: Japanese and English
Suited to: blog, business, legal, docs, academic, literature, speech
Reads from the document: markdown

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 2 headings carry an emoji
normal	reported once 3 headings carry an emoji
relaxed	reported once 5 headings carry an emoji

By genre

Runs by default in: blog/tech, blog/essay, blog/owned-media, business/proposal, business/report, business/email, business/press-release, business/meeting-notes, speech/address, speech/transcript
Turned off by the genre in: legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play
Not suited to, and not run in: technical/spec, technical/readme

Genres

Message

Heading "{heading}" has an emoji ({count} headings with one, {limit} needed)

Rewrite depth (chaff fix-plan --depth): light — words and sentences; the structure and the voice stay

Sources

Zhang et al. (2024)

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