Flats: the regular and the running

Flats are a family of corrections that move in a horizontal range closer to sideways drifting than to a sharp slope. They are all of three waves A B C, but they differ in where the ends of these waves fall. Our school has four flat patterns, defined structurally by two questions: does B break the top of the motive wave? and does C break the low of wave A? Three of them exist in standard Elliott; the fourth (the contracting) is our school’s own. In this lesson we take the regular and the running, and in the next the expanded and the contracting, with the targets of all four.

The regular flat

In the regular flat, wave B ends close to the start of A, and wave C ends close to the end of A. The correction thus looks like a largely balanced horizontal range that barely exceeds its edges.