Write Better with Vale

Automate Your Style Guides and Lint Prose Like You Lint Code

by Brian P. Hogan

Create consistent content that gives readers confidence with Vale, the open-source prose linter that helps you enforce your style guide automatically. Use battle-tested rules based on freely available, popular style guides, apply your brand’s terms with a custom vocabulary, and integrate Vale into your text editor, Git hooks, and CI pipeline. Catch typos and inclusive-language issues before they ship, and spend your energy on shaping ideas instead of fixing copy. Whether you’re a technical writer working in a docs-as-code environment, or a software engineer who occasionally writes, you’ll ship clean, consistent copy every time.

When you work on a content project, keeping things consistent can feel impossible. Typos slip through, people don’t follow style rules, and each contributor brings a slightly different voice. Vale helps you ensure consistency across your content.

You’ll start by catching typos as you learn how Vale works through hands-on examples. Then you’ll bring in community rules based on Google’s and Microsoft’s style guides. You’ll combine overlapping styles, adjust the rules to match your needs, and start shaping the experience you want readers to have. Then you’ll build your own rules from scratch and create a custom vocabulary to teach Vale to enforce your team’s voice and jargon. By the end, you’ll have a fully integrated, reusable style package that works in your editor, GitHub Actions, and your build systems. And while this book uses Markdown in its examples, you’ll be ready to apply everything you learned to reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, and even the comments in your source code.

Vale gives you a fast, reliable, and customizable way to keep your content consistent.

• Errata, typos, suggestions

• Source Code (zip file)

Releases:

• B1.0 2025/09/07

Note: Contents and extracts of beta books will change as the book is developed.

• Preface
  • What’s in This Book?
  • Who Should Read This Book
  • What You Need
  • Where to Go for Help
• Getting Started with Vale
  • Installing Vale
  • Setting Up Vale on your Project
  • Checking Multiple Formats
  • Getting Insight into Vale’s Configuration
  • Using Different Configuration Files
  • Overriding Files to Scan
  • Your Turn
  • Wrapping Up
• Using Existing Styles excerpt
  • Downloading Existing Styles with Vale
  • Adding a Complementary Style
  • Checking for Readability, Profanity, and Inconsiderate Writing
  • Filtering Results
  • Your Turn
  • Wrapping Up
• Building Your Own Style
  • Creating a New Style
  • Ensuring Something Exists in the Document
  • Enforcing Capitalization
  • Linting Front Matter
  • Incorporating and Managing Existing Rules
  • Enforcing Word Usage
  • Enforcing Grammar with Natural Language
  • Your Turn
  • Wrapping Up
• Integrating Vale into Your Workflow
  • See Errors As You Work
  • Linting Comments in Source Code
  • Writing Custom Rules with Scripts
  • Working with Custom Formats
  • Sharing Your Style Across Multiple Projects
  • Using Vale with GitHub Actions
  • Your Turn
  • Wrapping Up
• Resources Referenced