taste-ux-copy

Copy is the interface's personality and its instruction manual. Bad copy makes good design look broken.

1. VOICE & TONE (Decide It First, Then Write)

Pick a voice from the brand read and lock it:

Rules that hold in every voice: be concrete ("42 rows" not "some data"), be honest (no "just" — "Just enter your email" is a lie), address the reader as you/your on marketing, no exclamation marks except one-per-page celebrations, no passive voice in errors, no corporate filler ("leverage", "streamline", "robust").

2. HEADLINES (Formulas That Work)

• Outcome + audience: "Analytics that don't need a data team."
• Before → after: "From 'where are my users going?' to 'oh, there.'"
• Name the pain: "Your signup form is leaking 63% of visitors."
• Authority + promise: "The 2026 pricing guide for indie SaaS."
• Curiosity with a payoff (never curiosity alone): "We deleted our dashboard. Here's what we replaced it with."

Rules: H1 under 12 words; one idea; the product name can live in the subline, not the H1; no punctuation theatrics (?!,!!!); no "The Future of X" openers.

3. BUTTONS & ACTIONS (The Most-Read Words on the Page)

• Buttons say the action: "Save changes" > "Submit" > "OK". First-person lifts consumer conversion: "Start my free trial".
• Destructive actions say what dies: "Delete project" (never "OK"). Paired with a cancel that's equally visible.
• Loading/disabled states say what's happening, not a promise: "Saving…" > "Please wait". Never "Almost done" if it's not provable.
• The label must survive without context: no icon-only buttons without accessible text.

4. ERRORS (Formula: What + Why + Fix)

Every error message has three beats, in order:

1. What happened, in plain language ("We couldn't save this section").
2. Why (one clause max: "the file is larger than 10 MB").
3. The fix (the verb: "Remove some images and try again", or a link).

Before/after pairs:

Field-level errors sit next to the field, not in a toast on the other side of the screen. Never blame the user ("You entered…" → "This field needs…").

5. EMPTY STATES (Every Empty State Has a Job)

1. Name the emptiness ("No projects yet").
2. Why it's empty (one line: "Projects show up here when you create them").
3. The next action (one button: "Create your first project").
4. Optional: a tiny win ("Takes about 4 minutes").

An empty state with no next step is a dead end. A dead end is a product failure.

6. STATUS & LOADING

• Progress: verbs, not promises ("Uploading 3 of 8 files…").
• Completion: state what changed, not just "Done" ("8 files uploaded to /reports").
• Notifications: subject + one clause + optional action, under 20 words: "Payment failed — your card was declined. Update it here."
• Skeleton states: never show a skeleton for longer than ~2s without a message.

7. INCLUSIVE & LOCALIZED READY

• No "guys", "man-hours", gendered pronouns in generic copy; "they" is fine. Avoid "simply/easily/just" (they insult the reader's context).
• Numbers: "1,024" not "1k" where precision matters; dates spell out where ambiguous (July 3 ≠ 7/3).
• Write for translation: no nested variables mid-sentence ("Your {{count}} friends" → "Friends: {{count}}"), no idioms ("hit the ground running"), no emoji-only messages.

8. CHECKLIST (Fail the Copy If…)

• Any sentence with "leverage", "streamline", "robust", "seamless", "cutting-edge".
• Any error without a fix.
• Any button that says "Submit" or "OK" where a real verb exists.
• Any empty state without a next action.
• Any headline over 12 words or with a "!".
• Any claim the page can't support on the same viewport.
• Two different labels for the same action on one page.