Redundant Time Period References

Description

This rule identifies redundant time period references where "a.m." or "p.m." are used alongside their descriptive equivalents ("in the morning", "in the evening", "at night", "in the afternoon"). Since "a.m." already means morning and "p.m." covers afternoon/evening/night, using both creates unnecessary redundancy in the text. This helps maintain clear, concise writing by eliminating superfluous time-related phrases.

Examples

This rule will flag phrases like:

❌ "9 a.m. in the morning"
❌ "7 p.m. in the evening"
❌ "10 p.m. at night"
❌ "2 p.m. in the afternoon"

Instead, you should use:

✅ "9 a.m."
✅ "7 p.m."
✅ "10 p.m."
✅ "2 p.m."

The rule works with various formats of a.m./p.m. (with or without periods and spaces), but will always flag when these are combined with their redundant descriptive counterparts.

Rule Source

This rule comes from: https://github.com/mesosphere/dcos-docs-site

Rule Definition

extends: existence
message: "'a.m.' is always morning; 'p.m.' is always night."
ignorecase: true
level: error
nonword: true
tokens:
  - '\d{1,2} ?a\.?m\.? in the morning'
  - '\d{1,2} ?p\.?m\.? in the evening'
  - '\d{1,2} ?p\.?m\.? at night'
  - '\d{1,2} ?p\.?m\.? in the afternoon'