Relative month without year

'Last May', 'next March', 'this October' — relative month references become ambiguous within twelve months of writing.

What ProfText flags

Relative month reference without year. Will be ambiguous after 12 months.

How to fix it

Add year: 'May 2025' or 'as of December 2024'.

Why this matters

A relative month makes sense to the author at the moment of writing and to no one else thereafter. 'Last May' read in November means one thing; the same phrase read the following August means another. Documents that outlive their author's tenure (procedures, policies, knowledge bases, contracts) need absolute dates. Add the year — 'May 2024', 'as of October 2025' — and the reference survives indefinitely.

Languages

• en
• fr
• de
• it

Detection pattern

\b(last|next|this|previous|upcoming)\s+(january|february|march|april|may|june|july|august|september|october|november|december)\b

Related rules

• Relative time period without anchor'Last week', 'this quarter', 'next fiscal year' — relative periods age out of meaning within months.
• 'Recently', 'currently', 'nowadays' — vague temporal markersWords like 'recently' and 'currently' carry no anchor date. Readers a year later have no way to know what was meant.
• 'Early', 'late', 'mid' month or season'Early spring', 'late October', 'mid-summer' — common shorthand that loses meaning without the year.