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 # Pydocstringformatter
 
-A tool to automatically format Python docstrings that tries to follow recommendations
-from [`PEP 8`](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/) and
-[`PEP 257`](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/). See
-[What it does](#what-it-does) for currently supported auto-formatting.
+A tool to automatically format Python docstrings to follow recommendations from
+[`PEP 8`](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/) and
+[`PEP 257`](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/).
+
+See [What it does](#what-it-does) for currently supported auto-formatting.
+
+### Rationale
+
+This project is heavily inspired by
+[`docformatter`](https://github.com/PyCQA/docformatter).
+
+When this project was started `docformatter` did not meet all of the requirements the
+[`pylint`](https://github.com/PyCQA/pylint) project had for its docstring formatter and
+sadly `docformatter` is now also no longer fully supported. Therefore, some contributors
+of `pylint` got together and started working on our own formatter to fulfill our needs.
+
+When asked we defined the objective of the tool as:
+
+_"A docstring formatter that follows PEP8 and PEP257 but makes some of the more
+'controversial' elements of the PEPs optional"_
+
+See
+[the original answer](https://github.com/DanielNoord/pydocstringformatter/issues/38).
+
+As such, the biggest difference between the two is that `pydocstringformatter` fixes
+some of the open issues we found in `docformatter`. In general, the output of both
+formatters (and any other docstring formatter) should be relatively similar.
 
 ## How to install