How to write clear, concise, and useful UX copy
Photo by Tatiana Syrikova from PexelsThere are many UX writing principles to practice, but when you’re just starting out or are more on the technical side of things, doing everything “perfectly” can feel overwhelming.
A good place for everyone to start mastering effective UX writing is to learn how to write clear, concise, and useful UX copy.
These three core UX writing principles are the foundation for converting company-centric, technical copy into people-centric, accessible designs.
Clear UX copy is jargon-free and offers context
UX writers don’t only understand how to sift through technical specs and distill the real message — they translate software problems into people problems.
That comes with knowing how to be clear.
Clear microcopy is jargon-free and offers context. It removes technical terms and puts the action up front and in context.
In this blog post, I’m going to work through an example of how to transform a poor error message into a clear, concise, and useful message, starting with clear.
Take a look at this error message transformation:
In the ‘before,’ someone seeing this is given no context as to what went wrong. ‘Authentication’ is also a technical term that someone wouldn’t grasp the meaning of.
By changing the copy to erase jargon and give context as to what went wrong, the message now satisfies the ‘clear’ requirement.
Concise UX copy is economical and frontloaded
Mark Twain said it best: “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”
Concise UX copy doesn’t just mean short copy. It means that every single word serves a heavy-lifting purpose, making the line of text incredibly efficient.
Of course, this only comes with a content-first design practice.
Instead of having a UX writer fill in the blanks, content-first design makes sure the visuals match what the experience is trying to communicate, not the other way around.
To accomplish content-first design, UX writers and product designers need to work in parallel.
Aside from content-first design, concise microcopy also comes from frontloading.
People read (or scan) in an F-shaped pattern, meaning they read the first line, second line, and scan the rest, only digesting the first or second word of each line.
Frontloading puts the most important concepts first. That way people get the key message upfront and can scan the lower-priority information as they go along.
Following along with the error message example, you’ll see that the most important words, ‘incorrect password’, are all the way at the end of the line.
To make the microcopy concise and account for F-shaped patterns, in my revision, I put ‘incorrect password’ at the front.
Additionally, ‘You entered an’ isn’t doing any heavy lifting, and microcopy can still easily be understood without it.
Useful UX copy points to the next action
The final layer to transforming your microcopy is to make it useful.
Useful UX copy directs to the next action to help people get where they want to go.
Emphasis on where *they* want to go — it’s important to not just lead someone where you want them to go. Design for edge cases and give people the options they need to make an informed decision.
If your call-to-action doesn’t resonate with what people want to do, they’ll leave.
The last step in our example is to make it useful with helpful, relevant next steps.
With this last brush of polish, we give someone clear next steps and options.
These three UX writing principles are only the beginning.
Master them, and come back here to level up and learn how to write usable, helpful, and accessible UX copy.
