2025.10.05

New rules

DOC-EN

DOC-EN19

Explain acronyms and abbreviations on first use. However, don't do this for common terms used in everyday life.

• "POC" is "point-of-contact (POC)" on first use, then use "POC" after
• Common terms like Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) should just be GIF

Miscellaneous changes

New contribution guidelines

The contribution guidelines have been updated to include the following new sections:

Requirements for proposing new rules

• A description of the new rule in one or two sentences
• An explanation of what issue it'll fix
• Examples of writing before and after the rule is applied
• If possible, some example of where this rule fixed the issue described above
  • Good examples include techniques from the W3C, or examples from well-known style guides
  • Bad examples include personal opinions or anecdotal evidence

A new issue template has been created to include these new requirements.

Requirements for pull requests

• Update the documentation as needed
• Reference the issue your pull request fixes
  • All pull requests should be linked to an issue, even if it's just a minor fix. This makes separating general discussion from development easier.
• (Maintainers only) All pull requests should have a branch name that reflects the issue type, number, and a short description. For example, feature/123-new-rule-description or bug/456-fix-typo.

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Full changelog: 2025.09.07...2025.10.05

2025.09.07

Breaking change: DOC rules are now DOC-EN

On 6th September 2025, Doclint rules were updated to use DOC-EN<rule_number> instead of DOC<rule_number>. This was to facilitate future additions of languages other than English.

All edits to documentation referencing DOC rules on or before this date are considered to be referencing the updated DOC-EN rules.

If your project uses Doclint, please make sure it has a note regarding this change to prevent confusion in the future.

New DOC-EN rules

DOC-EN16

Limit minor steps or instructions to a maximum of 3. If more steps are needed, consider breaking them into separate major steps. Having more than 3 minor steps can make instructions harder to follow.

1. Step 1.1 > step 1.2 > step 1.3 > step 1.4 > step 1.5
2. Step 2.1 > step 2.2 > step 2.3

becomes

1. Step 1.1 > step 1.2 > step 1.3
2. Step 2.1 > step 2.2
3. Step 3.1 > step 3.2 > step 3.3

DOC-EN17

Use words for large numbers, such as 1,000,000 or 8,000,000,000.

• "1,000,000" becomes "1 million"
• "8,000,000,000" becomes "8 billion"
• However, numbers meant to be specific, such as 1,234,567 should remain as digits to maintain accuracy.

DOC-EN18

Use digits instead of words for numbers over 9. For 10 and above, use digits. Numbers below 10 can be misread as letters, such as 1 and I.

• "1, 2, 3" is "one, two, three"
• "twelve, thirteen, fourteen" is "12, 13, 14"

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Full changelog: 2025.09.06...2025.09.07

2025.09.06

This serves as the initial release of Doclint.