Too many "very" + adjective
very-adjectiveon by default (info)Japanese / English
"Very" + adjective, such as "very important", used too often
Example
The rule measures the whole document, so this example was tried with an ordinary passage (about 200 words) after it that gives chaff nothing to report.
How to fix
Use a stronger word, or say what and how much ("very important" → "critical", "very fast" → "under a second"; とても速い → 1 秒以内に開く).
Why it matters
"Very important" and "very good" (とても便利, 非常に危険) lean on "very" where a stronger word (critical, excellent), or saying what and how much, would do. One or two are ordinary; many for the length make every "very" weightless. The intensifiers, and set phrases not counted such as "the very first" and "very few", are listed in the lexicon.
What it does not flag
Only "very" before an adjective ("very well" is not counted), and not "the very first", "very few" or "very much". In Japanese, a word such as 便利 counts as an adjective only before な, で, だ or です; とても重要 is left to empty-intensifier, and 大変, used in set courtesies (大変お世話になりました), is not counted. Short documents are not measured. The fiction and speech presets turn it off, since dialogue speaks that way.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L2
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- info
- Languages
- Japanese and English
- Suited to
- business, technical, blog, legal, docs, academic, literature, speech
- Reads from the document
- pos
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 | up to 1 "very" + adjective per 1000 words |
|---|---|
| normal | up to 2 "very" + adjective per 1000 words |
| relaxed | up to 4 "very" + adjective per 1000 words |
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
- Turned off by the genre in
- literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript
Message
"{matched}" and other "very" + adjective: {density} per 1000 words (limit {limit})
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/very-adjective.yaml