All rules

Wordy phrase

wordy-phraseon by default (info)Japanese / English

Phrases like "in order to" or "due to the fact that" where one word does

Example

Flagged
In order to save time, we met online. Due to the fact that the room was booked, we stayed home.
What chaff prints
1:1 "in order to" can be said in fewer words 1:39 "due to the fact that" can be said in fewer words
Fixed
To save time, we met online. Because the room was booked, we stayed home.
What chaff prints
no finding

How to fix

Use the short form ("in order to" → "to", "due to the fact that" → "because", "in the event that" → "if"; することが可能です → できます).

Why it matters

"In order to", "due to the fact that" and "at this point in time" (することが可能, 現時点において) say in several words what "to", "because" and "now" say in one. The reader reads more and learns nothing more. The phrases and their short forms are listed in the lexicon. Phrases that contracts and statutes use on purpose ("with regard to", "prior to") are left out.

What it does not flag

Only the phrases on chaff's list are checked. Phrases that contracts and statutes use on purpose ("with regard to", "prior to", "in accordance with") are not on it, nor is "at all times", which states the scope of a rule ("pets must be on a leash at all times"). In Japanese, することができる, ordinary in human writing, and 必要性, which a noun phrase may need, are left out; translationese (を可能にする) is translationese-density's and 〜を行う is nominalization's.

Turning it off or relaxing it

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

strictreported once 1 sentences hold one
normalreported once 2 sentences hold one
relaxedreported once 4 sentences hold one

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, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper
Turned off by the genre in
legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript

Genres

Message

"{matched}" can be said in fewer words

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/wordy-phrase.yaml