staccato

A rule that is off by default: it reports three or more consecutive sentences of six words or fewer in one paragraph once a decisions table turns it on.

What it catches

Three or more consecutive sentences of six words or fewer in one paragraph.

Dimension

structure: the reader has to reconstruct the order or the purpose. A finding is counted on the dimension of its rule, the cost it names to the reader.

Why

A run of fragments reads as a drumbeat. At a cap of 4 words the rule found nothing and missed a real run; at 6 it found that run and docs/scope.md alone. It denies in a change description and advises on a page; a guide's steps and agent instructions are short by rule, so it does not judge them. Measured 2026-10-11 over the adjudicated labeling round: 28.2% precision (11 of 39) before, 73.3% (11 of 15) after. Left alone now: quoted words, a title, a paragraph laid out as an HTML list, initials and abbreviations, and a run broken by a link, a label ending in a colon, or a line with no word (a path, an emoji, a log line). It stays off: terse template answers ("Low. Only adding a registration.") still fire.

Default decision

The code is PRF4012. 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": {"staccato": "deny"},
  "paths": {"blog/**": {"staccato": "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": "staccato", "code": "PRF4012", "decision": "off", "url": "https://eli.gladman.cc/magus/reference/proofread/staccato/"}

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