A provision's verb form is not the one the house rule uses
requirement-modalwhen listed in chaff.yamlJapanese / English
A requirement's verb ("must", "shall") that the team's house rule does not use
Example
How to fix
Decide whether the sentence states an obligation and write "must" ("must not" for a prohibition). Keep "shall" only where a law you quote uses it.
Why it matters
A standard or a set of rules tells a requirement from a recommendation and a permission by the form of the verb, and the reader takes from it whether something must be done, should be done or may be done. JIS Z 8301:2019 does not use 「…すべきである」 for a recommendation or a closing 「…できる」 for a permission or a possibility; it uses 「…することが望ましい」, 「…してもよい」 and 「…可能である」. In English, the Federal Plain Language Guidelines use "must" for an obligation instead of "shall", which readers and courts take in more than one way. Both are a team's choice, so the rule checks only what options turn on.
What it does not flag
Nothing is checked until options pick a standard. In Japanese, できる is checked only at the end of a sentence, since JIS allows it mid-sentence for an ability.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L2
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- warning
- 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 | 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, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript
Message
Write "{preferred}" instead of "{matched}"
Sources
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/requirement-modal.yaml