Wording in Interfaces

Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexiable. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.

Minecraft Ending Poems

Every word in an interface is a design decision. Even the punctuation. Strip away the colors, the shadows, the border radii, and what's left is text.

A pixel-perfect layout with lazy copy feels broken. A plain layout with precise copy feels professional. The gap between the two is not aesthetics. It's trust.

Below are eight rules I keep reaching for, plus one final exam at the end. Each rule comes with quizzes as evidence. Let's train your judgement: read the rule, pick your answer (A or B?), and submit.

Verb only what has no noun

A verb bolted onto a name that already works is not extra clarity. It's a word that has to be read, in a shape you have never seen before, to arrive at what the noun already said. Check whatever is open on your screen right now: none of those menus say "Open Settings." (Command palettes are the exception that proves the rule. A palette is a flat list you search by typing, so the verb is the search key. A menu isn't searched, it's scanned.)

Save verbs for the rows that have no noun. There is no object called a log out, no thing called an update check. Those have to be verbs, and that's exactly what makes them useful: when almost every row is a noun, a verb becomes a signal that this one does something.

When a row does earn its verb, the verb still has to say what it acts on:

Icon toolbars raise the stakes, because the tooltip is the whole label:

Synonyms are not interchangeable

English is full of near-synonyms that dictionaries treat as interchangeable but interfaces cannot. The wrong one shifts the tone, implies the wrong mental model, or adds a millisecond of hesitation.

Every string must add information

Every string in an interface competes for a fixed budget of attention. A string earns its place by telling the people something they don't already know: what to type, what just happened, what's coming. A string that repeats what's already on screen isn't neutral; it's noise that trains peoples to stop reading.

It holds for form fields:

For the moment after an action:

And for the wait itself:

Never leave a dead end

Errors and empty results are the moments when the people wanted something and didn't get it. The words there decide whether the moment ends the session or redirects it. A message that only announces failure is a wall; the job is to build a door.

An empty result is the same moment in disguise:

Consequences, not fear

When an action is risky, the instinct is to escalate the warning language. But fear is not information. Users learn to click through scary words the way they learn to ignore cookie banners. What they can actually weigh is facts.

Serve the people's intent, not yours

Copy quietly reveals who the product thinks it's for. Wording that mirrors the company's org chart, database, or git log makes the people do the translation. Wording that starts from what the people came to do makes the product do it.

Changelogs run the same test:

One concept, one word

The other side of synonyms: once you've picked a word, use it everywhere. Varying the noun or verb for the same thing makes peoples wonder if you mean something different. Elegant variation is for novels, not interfaces.

The same discipline holds in email:

Text has a shape

Before anyone reads a single word, they see the text as a shape: its length, its line breaks, its density. That shape is already a message. Be aggressively comfortable rewriting sentences to change the shape they make.

The shape is also literal:

All the rules at once

One screen, every rule. Settings pages are where wording problems compound: every toggle is a bet on whether the people understands the current state of their own product. Every row below is a different sub-problem.

The rules, in one list

• Verb only what has no noun — then name what it acts on.
• Every string must add information.
• Never leave a dead end.
• Consequences, not fear.
• Serve the people's intent, not yours.
• One concept, one word.
• Text has a shape.

Interfaces should sound like a helpful colleague: clear, concise, and human. Words compound: one well-written label is forgettable, but a hundred of them make software feel alive.

For non-English native speakers, establish strong English skill before you consider the wording.

I collected many details like these, free for everyone, on Detail.