Too many decorative figures
figurative-densityon by default (info)Japanese / English
Figures such as "like magic" or "secret sauce" piled up instead of the mechanism
Example
The rule measures the whole document, so this example was tried with an ordinary passage (about 200 words) after it that gives chaff nothing to report.
How to fix
Replace the figure with what happens ("the config sets itself up like magic" becomes "the tool reads the config file and fills in the defaults").
Why it matters
A figure such as "works like magic", "a one-line incantation" or "our secret sauce" adds colour once. Piled up, the document goes on without saying what actually happens, and a reader who wants the mechanism gets only the figure. None of them is wrong alone, so the rule counts them per length of the document. The figures are in the lexicon figurative-phrase, each with what to write instead.
What it does not flag
None of these is wrong alone, so short documents are not measured. A plain comparison or example ("tools such as A and B") is not counted. The literature and speech genres turn it off.
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 | up to 1 decorative figures per 1000 words |
|---|---|
| normal | up to 2 decorative figures per 1000 words |
| relaxed | up to 3 decorative figures per 1000 words |
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
"{matched}" and other decorative figures: {density} per 1000 words
Rewrite depth (chaff fix-plan --depth): register — the style is converted: polite to plain endings, comparatives removed and so on
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/figurative-density.yaml