Vale: Your Style, Our Editor

🌟 We're now offering Integration Assistance! This is a great way to support the project while also getting the time-consuming tasks (e.g., creating a Vale-compatible version of your house style and setting up a CI service) out of the way. Shoot us an email for more information! 🌟

Vale is a natural language linter that supports plain text, markup (Markdown, reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, and HTML), and source code comments. Vale doesn't attempt to offer a one-size-fits-all collection of rules—instead, it strives to make customization as easy as possible.

Check out project website to learn more!

Highlights

• Supports Markdown, reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, HTML, and source code.
• Extensible through straightforward YAML files.
• Standalone binaries for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• Expressive, EditorConfig-like configuration.

Features

Vale's functionality is split into extension points (called "checks") that can be customized to perform many different kinds of tasks, including calculating readability, measuring sentence length, enforcing a particular heading style, and identifying undefined acronyms. See the Style Showcase for more advanced examples.

Additionally, since Vale is "syntax aware," you'll never have to worry about syntax-related false positives (e.g., URLs or code blocks). See Creating a style for more information.

Installation

There are a few options to choose from:

• Homebrew:

  $ brew tap ValeLint/vale
  $ brew install vale

• Chocolatey:

  C:\> choco install vale

• A Windows Installer package (.msi), which you'll find on the releases page.

• Manually on Windows, macOS, or Linux by downloading an executable from the releases page.

Usage

Run Vale on a single file:

$ vale README.md

Run Vale on files matching a particular glob:

# Only lint Markdown and reStructuredText
$ vale --glob='*.{md,rst}' directory

Or exclude files matching a particular glob:

# Ignore all `.txt` files
$ vale --glob='!*.txt' directory

Pipe input to Vale:

$ echo 'this is some very interesting text' | vale

Run Vale on text with an assigned syntax:

$ vale --ext=.md 'this is some `very` interesting text'

See vale --help and Configuration for more information.

Integrations

• Atom—TimKam/atomic-vale
• Emacs—abingham/flycheck-vale
• Sublime Text—ValeLint/SubVale
• Visual Studio Code—lunaryorn/vscode-vale
• Vim—via ALE (thanks to @chew-z)

Reference Styles

Style (source)	Download	Description	Development Status
Joblint	Joblint.zip	Test tech job posts for issues with sexism, culture, expectations, and recruiter fails.	✅
proselint	proselint.zip	A linter for English prose that aggregates knowledge about best practices in writing.	✅
write-good	write-good.zip	Naive linter for English prose for developers who can't write good and wanna learn to do other stuff good too.	✅

To use one of these styles, you'd copy its files onto your StylesPath and then specify it in your config file:

# This goes in a file named either `.vale` or `_vale`.

StylesPath = path/to/some/directory
MinAlertLevel = warning # suggestion, warning or error

[*.{md,txt}] # Only Markdown and .txt files
# List of styles to load
BasedOnStyles = vale, Joblint
# Style.Rule = {YES, NO, suggestion, warning, error} to
# enable/disable a rule or change its level.
vale.Editorializing = NO

See Configuration and Styles for more information.