Flags without forcing the pole
If you cannot name the impulse that built the pole, you do not have a flag — you have a sideways scribble.
Continuation patterns inherit their meaning from the move that precedes them. A tidy parallelogram after a choppy grind is not a flag; it is consolidation without a measured-move story.
In the Continuation Workshop we start every chart by marking the pole’s start and end in price and time. Only then do we ask whether the pause is proportional. Overlong flags relative to the pole usually fail or morph into rectangles with different implications.
Keep a simple ratio note on your worksheet. When the pause exceeds roughly half the pole’s duration without a clean break, step back and reassess rather than inventing a breakout.