contrast

A rule that is off by default: it reports a claim made by denying its opposite first ("not just X, it is Y") once a decisions table turns it on.

What it catches

A claim made by denying its opposite first ("not just X, it is Y").

Dimension

economy: words that carry nothing. A finding is counted on the dimension of its rule, the cost it names to the reader.

Why

Negative parallelism argues with a position nobody took. It denies in a change description, where 200 merged pull requests used it 0 times, and advises elsewhere, where the docs use it deliberately 15 times. Measured 2026-10-11 over the adjudicated labeling round: 61.2% precision (30 of 49) before, 100% (30 of 30, lower bound 0.89) after, so it ships advise everywhere. Left alone now: quoted words, a conditional ("if it is not provided, it is derived"), a correction in parentheses, "not only" before anything but an article, a contrast answering a position the paragraph reports ("You proposed ..."), and "no X, no Y, just" listing what happened.

Default decision

The code is PRF4010. 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": {"contrast": "deny"},
  "paths": {"blog/**": {"contrast": "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": "contrast", "code": "PRF4010", "decision": "off", "url": "https://eli.gladman.cc/magus/reference/proofread/contrast/"}

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