Scoping

Vale is "syntax aware," which means that it's capable of both applying rules to and ignoring certain sections of text. This functionality is implemented through a scoping system. A scope is specified through a selector such as paragraph.rst, which indicates that the rule applies to all paragraphs in reStructuredText files. Here are a few examples:

• comment matches all source code comments;
• comment.line matches all source code line comments;
• heading.md matches all Markdown headings; and
• text.html matches all HTML scopes.

Types, formats, and scopes

Vale classifies files into one of three types—markup, code, or text—that determine what scopes are available.

Within each type, there can be multiple supported formats—such as Markdown and AsciiDoc under markup. Since each format has access to the same scopes, rules are compatible across all formats within a particular type.

markup

Scope	Description
heading	Matches all <h{1,...}> tags. You can specify an exact level by appending a tags—for example, heading.h1 matches all h1 tags.
table.header	Matches all <th> tags.
table.cell	Matches all <td> tags.
list	Matches all <li> tags.
paragraph	Matches all paragraphs (segments of text separated by two newlines).
sentence	Matches all sentences.
link	Matches all <a> tags.
alt	Matches all alt attributes.
blockquote	Matches all <blockquote> tags.
summary	Matches all body text (excluding headings, code spans, code blocks, and table cells).
code	Matches all <code> tags.
strong	Matches all <strong> and <b> tags.
emphasis	Matches all <em> and <i> tags
raw	Uses the raw, unprocessed markup source instead of a specific scope.

code

There are two code scopes: comment.line and comment.block.

text

Any format not listed below is considered to be text and has no special scoping rules applied.

Formats

Markdown

Heads up!

Markdown autolinks are not currently supported. See issues/288 for more information.

GitHub-Flavored Markdown support is built in. By default, indented blocks, fenced blocks, and code spans are ignored.

If you're using another flavor of Markdown, see non-standard markup for information on how to make your flavor compatible.

HTML

HTML5 support is built in. By default, script, style, pre, code, and tt tags are ignored.

reStructuredText

reStructuredText is supported through the external program rst2html. You can get rst2html by installing either Sphinx or docutils.

By default, literal blocks, inline literals, and code-blocks are ignored.

AsciiDoc

AsciiDoc is supported through the external program Asciidoctor.

By default, listing blocks and inline literals are ignored.

DITA

Heads up!

Due to the dependency on the third-party dita command, you'll likely experience worse performance with DITA files compared to other formats.

DITA is supported through the DITA Open Toolkit. You'll need to follow the installation instructions, including the optional step of adding the absolute path for the bin directory to the PATH system variable.

By default, <codeblock>, <tt>, and <codeph> elements are ignored.

XML

XML is supported through the external program xsltproc.

You also need to provide a version 1.0 XSL Transformation (XSLT) for converting to HTML:

[*.xml]
Transform = docbook-xsl-snapshot/html/docbook.xsl

Code

Language	Extensions	Tokens (scope)
C	.c, .h	// (text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
C#	.cs, .csx	// (text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
C++	.cpp, .cc, .cxx, .hpp	// (text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
CSS	.css	/*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
Go	.go	// (text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
Haskell	.hs	-- (text.comment.line.ext), {- (text.comment.block.ext)
Java	.java, .bsh	// (text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
JavaScript	.js	// (text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
LESS	.less	//(text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
Lua	.lua	-- (text.comment.line.ext), --[[ (text.comment.block.ext)
Perl	.pl, .pm, .pod	# (text.comment.line.ext)
PHP	.php	// (text.comment.line.ext), # (text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
Python	.py, .py3, .pyw, .pyi, .rpy	# (text.comment.line.ext), """ (text.comment.block.ext)
R	.r, .R	# (text.comment.line.ext)
Ruby	.rb	# (text.comment.line.ext), ^=begin (text.comment.block.ext)
Sass	.sass	// (text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)
Scala	.scala, .sbt	//(text.comment.line.ext),
Swift	.swift	// (text.comment.line.ext), /*...*/ (text.comment.line.ext), /* (text.comment.block.ext)

Non-standard markup

When working with non-HTML markup, you'll probably find that there are certain non-standard sections of text you'd like to ignore.

To ignore entire blocks of text—for example, Hugo's shortcodes—you'll want to define BlockIgnores. For example, consider the following shortcode-like file snippet:

{< file "hello.go" go >}
package main

func main() {
    fmt.Printf("hello, world\n")
}
{</ file >}

To ignore all instances of file, we'd use a pattern along the lines of the following:

BlockIgnores = (?s) *({< file [^>]* >}.*?{</ ?file >})

The basic idea is to capture the entire snippet in the first grouping. See regex101 for a more thorough explanation.

You can also define more than one by using a list (the \ allows for line breaks):

BlockIgnores = (?s) *({< output >}.*?{< ?/ ?output >}), \
(?s) *({< highlight .* >}.*?{< ?/ ?highlight >})

To ignore an inline section of text, you'll want to define TokenIgnores. For example, let's say we want to ignore math equations of the form $...$:

$\begin{bmatrix} k & k & k \end{bmatrix}^T$

Similar to BlockIgnores, we just need to define a pattern:

TokenIgnores = (\$+[^\n$]+\$+)

Markup-based configuration

You can use selective, in-text configuration through markup comments in certain formats. The follow sections describe the comment style required for each supported format.

Markdown & HTML

Markdown and HTML use HTML-style comments:

<!-- vale off -->

This is some text

more text here...

<!-- vale on -->

<!-- vale Style.Rule = NO -->

This is some text

<!-- vale Style.Rule = YES -->

reStructuredText

reStructuredText uses its own comment style:

.. vale off

This is some text

.. vale on

AsciiDoc

AsciiDoc uses HTML-style comments with its pass-through functionality:

pass:[<!-- vale Microsoft.GenderBias = NO -->]

This steward is ignored.

pass:[<!-- vale Microsoft.GenderBias = YES -->]

This is a steward that raises an alert.