4 rules for interface copy writing
Text on the internet is easy to ignore, but it makes a huge difference.
This post is about how to make your interface ‘click’ in a person’s mind so that he doesn’t have to think.
Here are 4 things to keep in mind. They all have to do with cohesiveness.
1) Use keywords
From your homepage to your password reset page to your signup page to all of your crud pages, you should use the same keywords.
William Veeder, who teaches writing at Chicago stresses in lectures that an important part of writing an essay is to repeat the same keywords in your topic sentences that you use in your thesis statements. For example, don’t call an a car an automobile in once place, a truck in another, and a bus in another. Instead, choose one word and stick to it. While he is somewhat better spoken in class, as his wiki page says “Professor Veeder does not believe in synonyms. One word cannot be interchangeable for another, because all words produce different responses (affects or feelings).”
That way your readers will not be distracted from your point about cars because they are confused about your wording.
For websites, this means keeping an interface cohesive by not using different words to describe the same thing. The next three points elaborate on this.
2) Use the same verbs
Choose one verb for each thing that people can do on your site.
Bad:
Add teams on this page
Use the button below to create a new team
Good:
Add teams on this page
Use the button below to add a new team
While the difference is subtle, using just “add” rather than “create”, “make” and “add” lets people using your site think less and get on with what you want them to do: use your app and pay you money.
3) Use the same nouns
Don’t waste people’s time by making them figure out that when you are talking about a, b and c, you are really just talking about a.
Bad:
Add meals on this page
Use the button below to create a new food
Good:
Add dinners on this page
Use the button below to add a new dinner
4) Use the right language – Rails specific
Choose class names only after doing a bit of research. You don’t want to name your model Soccer when it turns out that you are building your site for Europeans. In order to make it easier for them to use your site, you would have to go through everything and change things that default to the class name Soccer to use futbol instead. A little bit of foresight solves this problem.
Finally, if you find this useful, you might also like an earlier post about writing web copy .
February 13, 2009
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