All rules

Everything comes in threes

rule-of-threeon by default (info)Japanese / English

Lists that almost all have exactly three items, as if padded or trimmed to fit

Example

Flagged
# Stock control Good stock control is: - Accurate - Fast - Cheap Every day we: - Count - Record - Review Common mistakes: - Missed counts - Gaps in the record - No review
What chaff prints
5:1 3 of 3 lists have exactly three items (70% allowed)
Fixed
# Stock control Good stock control is: - Accurate - Fast Every day we: - Count - Record - Review - Match against the month-end count Common mistakes: - Missed counts - Gaps in the record - No review
What chaff prints
no finding
chaff.yaml used for this example
genre: blog/tech

How to fix

Drop the item you added to reach three.

Why it matters

Three items feel complete, so two become three and four become three.

What it does not flag

Documents with fewer than three lists are not checked. Business and specification (technical/spec) genres do not run this rule.

Turning it off or relaxing it

Silence this one spot (in the document)
<!-- stet: rule-of-three — reason -->
Relax it for the team (the reason is kept as a comment in chaff.yaml)
npx chaffjs relax rule-of-three --why "reason"
Turn it off for the team (chaff.yaml)
rules: rule-of-three: off
Technical details
Layer
L1
Status
stable
Severity
info
Languages
Japanese and English
Suited to
technical/readme, 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).

strictup to 50% of lists with exactly three items
normalup to 70% of lists with exactly three items
relaxedup to 90% of lists with exactly three items

By genre

Runs by default in
technical/readme, blog/tech, blog/essay, blog/owned-media
Turned off by the genre in
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
Not suited to, and not run in
technical/spec, business/proposal, business/report, business/email, business/press-release, business/meeting-notes

Genres

Message

{count} of {total} lists have exactly three items ({limit}% allowed)

Rewrite depth (chaff fix-plan --depth): light — words and sentences; the structure and the voice stay

Sources

This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/rule-of-three.yaml