Shares of a whole that do not add up to 100%
percent-sum-mismatchon by defaultJapanese / English
A breakdown whose percentages do not add up to 100%
Example
How to fix
Check the figures. Correct the wrong one, or add the missing item (such as "Other").
Why it matters
When the shares of a whole do not add up to 100%, the reader has to work out which figure is wrong or which item is missing. It happens when an item is added or removed, or when one figure is changed. The percentages are added only when the column's header, or the sentence or heading right above the list or the table, names the parts of a whole (breakdown, market share, composition). A column whose header is only "Weight", "Share", "Percentage" or "Proportion" (a unit in brackets aside) is added too, unless the sentence or heading right above the table, or one of its rows, names a rate (growth, interest rate, year over year). A breakdown written in one sentence ("software made up 50% of sales, maintenance 30% and training 25%") is added too, when the sentence has such a word and three or more percentages, or when its last percentage is the rest of the whole ("other 5%"), which only the parts of one whole have, unless a word for which way values moved stands right next to a percentage (grew 45%). Rounding is allowed, up to half the last digit per item (at least one point).
What it does not flag
Percentages not named as shares (rates, growth), a column headed by a rate applied to each row (Discount, Tax rate) even under a heading that names a breakdown, multiple-answer counts, signed changes (+3%), a table with a total row (left to "A total that is not the sum of its items"), and a single item are not added. A breakdown in one sentence whose sum is more than 10 points from 100% is not reported: it names only the larger parts, or shares of different wholes or of two periods.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L3
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- warning
- Languages
- Japanese and English
- Suited to
- business, technical, blog, legal, docs, academic, literature, speech
- Reads from the document
- quantities
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 | error |
|---|---|
| normal | warning |
| relaxed | info |
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, speech/address, speech/transcript
- Turned off by the genre in
- literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play
Message
The shares add up to {sum}, not 100%
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/percent-sum-mismatch.yaml