The shape of a good sentence
Interface copy is not decoration applied at the end. It is the part of the product that speaks, and it is usually written by whoever is least equipped to write it.
Mara Ellison
Writer and design lead
There is a moment near the end of most projects when someone realises the empty state needs words. It is late, everyone is tired, and the words get written in four minutes by whoever has the file open. Those four minutes then represent the product to every person who ever hits that screen.
Copy is not a coat of paint. It is the only part of the thing that talks.
Say the true thing first
Most weak interface writing is weak because it is postponing something. It softens, it apologises, it explains the mechanism instead of the consequence. The reader has to translate.
Compare a message that says an operation could not be completed with one that says the file is too large to upload, and that the limit is twenty megabytes. The second is not cleverer. It is simply the sentence someone was avoiding.
Shorter, but not clipped
Brevity is a good instinct that curdles quickly. Cutting words is only worth doing while meaning survives, and past a certain point you are just handing the work back to the reader.
- Cut adverbs before you cut nouns.
- Keep the word that carries the specific detail, always.
- If a sentence needs a comma to breathe, give it one.
- Read it aloud. The stumble is the edit.
Rhythm is a real thing
Sentences of the same length in a row flatten out and stop being heard. Vary them. A long one that carries an idea through a couple of turns, and then a short one. The short one lands.
Everything you write has a sound, whether or not you chose it.
Vocabulary is a promise
Pick a word for each concept and never quietly swap it. If it is a project on Monday it cannot be a workspace on Thursday. Every synonym asks the reader to check whether something new has been introduced, and that check costs more attention than the variety was worth.
Keep the list somewhere visible. Ten or fifteen words is usually the whole vocabulary of a product, and getting them stable does more for clarity than any amount of polish applied afterwards.
Write it first
The best trick I know is to write the copy before the layout. Empty state, error state, the confirmation, the one line that explains what this is. If the words are hard to write, the idea is not finished, and it is far cheaper to learn that on a page than after the thing is built.
Written by
Mara Ellison
Writer and design lead
Mara has spent twelve years shaping products for small teams, mostly by asking slower questions than anyone wanted. She writes Fieldnotes on Sunday mornings, usually before the house wakes up.
