absolute

An advisory by default: it explains, and blocks nothing, on never, nobody or nothing as a claim about the past ("has never fired", "nobody checked").

What it catches

Never, nobody or nothing as a claim about the past ("has never fired", "nobody checked").

Dimension

evidence: a claim says more or less than what was shown. A finding is counted on the dimension of its rule, the cost it names to the reader.

Why

An absolute over every run since a change reads as a verdict on whoever made it; saying when and how often states the same fact. It advises because this repository's docs use "never" 788 times and every sampled use states a contract ("never returns nil"). Measured 2026-10-11 over the adjudicated labeling round 2: 18.2% precision (8 of 44) before, 66.7% (8 of 12) after. Nearly every firing told what code or data did or lacks, so a verb said of code ("never used", "never existed"), a supposed or contrasted case ("if it never fired", "created but never used"), a "when" condition after it, a parenthetical note, the writer in the first person, quoted words and a "nothing" with no object ("the flag nothing cleared") are left alone. Labeling round 4 measured 6 of 40, a lower bound of 0.07, which each graded finding weighs.

Default decision

The code is PRF2003. The decision depends on the kind of text judged:

Changing it

A decisions table sets this rule to deny, advise or off, for everything judged or for the files a glob matches. Proofread reads the table from the file its -decisions flag names:

{
  "rules": {"absolute": "deny"},
  "paths": {"blog/**": {"absolute": "off"}}
}

rules applies to every file. A glob in paths applies to the files it matches, and the last match wins. A rule set to off never reports.

Seeing it

A finding names the rule, its code and the decision that applies, and links here:

{"rule": "absolute", "code": "PRF2003", "decision": "advise", "url": "https://eli.gladman.cc/magus/reference/proofread/absolute/"}

proofread rules prints this entry with every other rule's.

See also

• All proofread rules - every rule, grouped by what it checks
• Writing rules - how the rules apply to this repository's pages and pull requests
• The findings contract - the fields every finding carries