One tag, not two

A page’s tags are written on one line with commas between them and no brackets around them, as tags: hills, water. To YAML that is one piece of text, so the page has one tag, called hills, water. The same goes for pages.tags handed down, and for tags on an item of a table.

What you’ll see

warning  One tag, not two: `tags: hills, water` makes a single tag called `hills, water`
  For two tags, write `tags: [hills, water]`.
  More: https://statac.dev/e/one-tag-not-two/

In the terminal the message also names the file and line where there is one, and marks the exact text.

Why Statac warns

Statac reads what YAML reads, and makes the one tag, with its own page and its own place in the list of tags. That is rarely what was meant, and nothing on the page shows it until someone looks for the tag. Text in quotes, as tags: "hills, water", is plainly meant as one tag and is never told.

How to fix it

For several tags, put brackets around them, as the message shows, or write each on a line of its own beginning - . For one tag with a comma in its name, put it in quotes.

Example

In content/post-1.md:

---
title: Post 1
tags: hills, water
---

Two tags:

---
title: Post 1
tags: [hills, water]
---

Its name

Name	one-tag-not-two
In the terminal	statac explain one-tag-not-two
To stop showing it	quiet: [one-tag-not-two] in statac.yaml, once you have understood it. Statac still counts it.