All rules

A figure, table or clause pointed at by where it is

vague-figure-referenceon by defaultJapanese / English

"The table below" in a document that numbers its tables and figures

Example

Flagged
Sales rose, as the figure below shows. Figure 1: Sales by month
What chaff prints
1:16 Name it by its number instead of "the figure below" (this document numbers its Figures)
Fixed
Sales rose, as Figure 1 shows. Figure 1: Sales by month
What chaff prints
no finding

How to fix

Write the number of the figure, table or clause. "As the figure above shows" becomes "as Figure 3 shows"; "under the clause below" becomes "under Clause 5".

Why it matters

"The figure above" makes the reader search for the figure. When a figure is added or moved, what it points at changes without a word. Printing, page breaks and the width of the screen change what is above and below as well. JIS Z 8301:2019, 10.6, rules out pointers such as "the figure above". A document that numbers its figures and tables can name them ("Figure 3"), and one that numbers its clauses can name a clause ("Clause 4"). A kind that the document never numbers is not checked.

What it does not flag

A kind the document never numbers is not checked: there is no number to use. Nor are "Figure 2 below" (it has the number), a phrase inside a longer word, and code.

Turning it off or relaxing it

Silence this one spot (in the document)
<!-- stet: vague-figure-reference — reason -->
Relax it for the team (the reason is kept as a comment in chaff.yaml)
npx chaffjs relax vague-figure-reference --why "reason"
Turn it off for the team (chaff.yaml)
rules: vague-figure-reference: off
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).

stricterror
normalwarning
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
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

Genres

Message

Name it by its number instead of "{matched}" (this document numbers its {kind}s)

Sources

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