All rules

Figures and tables referred to out of order or out of place

figure-reference-orderon by default (info)Japanese / English

A figure or table referred to out of order, too late, or never

Example

Flagged
# Naps and memory Figure 2 shows recall by hour. Figure 1 shows the study design. Figure 1: Study design Figure 2: Recall by hour
What chaff prints
3:32 Figure 1 is first referred to after Figure 2
Fixed
# Naps and memory Figure 1 shows the study design. Figure 2 shows recall by hour. Figure 1: Study design Figure 2: Recall by hour
What chaff prints
no finding
chaff.yaml used for this example
genre: academic/paper

How to fix

Renumber the figures and tables in the order they are first referred to, or reorder the references. Place each figure near its first reference, and refer to every figure or remove it.

Why it matters

In a paper, figures and tables are numbered in the order the text first refers to them, and placed near that reference. When Figure 2 is referred to before Figure 1, or a figure is first referred to only after the section it appears in, the reader goes back and forth between the figure and the text. It happens after figures are swapped or sections moved. Three things are checked. A figure whose first reference comes out of numeric order; a figure first referred to only past a heading after its caption; and a figure never referred to while others of its kind are.

What it does not flag

A kind of figure the document never captions (a "Figure 1: …" line), figures of another document ("Figure 5 of the report"), link text, and numbers that are letters or numerals in words (Appendix A) are left alone. Appendices and annexes sit at the end, so only the order of their references is checked, not where they are or whether they are referred to. A figure or table captioned after an Appendix heading is not ordered against those of the main text: a paper numbers its appendix tables on from the main text and refers to them from the main text first. A document without headings is not checked for references past the section. Only the academic paper genre runs this rule.

Turning it off or relaxing it

Silence this one spot (in the document)
<!-- stet: figure-reference-order — reason -->
Relax it for the team (the reason is kept as a comment in chaff.yaml)
npx chaffjs relax figure-reference-order --why "reason"
Turn it off for the team (chaff.yaml)
rules: figure-reference-order: off
Technical details
Layer
L3
Status
stable
Severity
info
Languages
Japanese and English
Suited to
academic, legal, docs, 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).

strictwarning
normalinfo
relaxedinfo

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

Genres

Message

{label} is not referred to in numeric order

{label} is first referred to after {after}

{label} is first referred to only after the section it appears in

{label} is never referred to in the text

Rewrite depth (chaff fix-plan --depth): structure — sections, headings and paragraphs are reorganised

This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/figure-reference-order.yaml