A time the clock does not have

impossible-timeon by defaultJapanese / English

A time the clock does not have, such as "13 PM", "午後13時" or "10:75"

Example

Flagged

The briefing starts at 13 PM.

What chaff prints

1:24 "13 PM" is not a time (with AM or PM, the hour runs to 12)

Fixed

The briefing starts at 1 PM.

What chaff prints

no finding

How to fix

Check the time that was meant and correct it. For one in the afternoon write "1 PM" or "13:00", not both at once.

Why it matters

A time such as "13 PM", "午後13時" or "10:75" is not on the clock. The reader cannot tell whether 1 PM or 13:00 was meant, or which minute, and someone turns up at the wrong time. It happens when the 24-hour clock and AM/PM are mixed, or a digit is mistyped. With AM or PM the hour runs to 12, and minutes and seconds to 59, so a machine can tell.

What it does not flag

A time past 24 without AM or PM ("25:00") is not reported, since late-night schedules count on past midnight that way. Numbers right after a capitalised word or a punctuation mark ("Genesis 24:67", "Science, 12:75"), scales and ratios such as "1:75", and "pm" after a number above 24 (50 pm is picometres) are not read as times. Code is not read.

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 impossible-time --why "reason"

Turn it off for the team (chaff.yaml)

rules: impossible-time: off

Technical details

Layer: L3
Status: stable
Severity: error
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).

normal	error
relaxed	warning

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

Genres

Message

"{written}" is not a time (with AM or PM, the hour runs to 12)

"{written}" is not a time (minutes and seconds run to 59)

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/impossible-time.yaml