My copy must be good, you say, because it follows the style guide. Okay, great. But…
Is the style guide good?
Or: do you even have a style guide? Some companies cherry pick from international companies, assuming that since they’re big they must be good. But that’s not alway the case, and anyway, style guides are primarily great for consistency. Should toasts have periods? Should empty states focus on what to expect or what to create? Should errors be sentence case or title case?
Hopefully your style guide covers things like that. If so, yeah: check your copy against it. But just because it fits doesn’t mean it works.
A good style guide will have those basic guidelines — punctuation and capitalization and length — but will also cover voice and purpose and tone. Remember, good UX copy fulfills a purpose, and that’s usually to explain something clearly and concisely.
(See Gov.UK’s style guide as an example of good grammar guides.)
Does it work within the specific context?
Maybe you have an amazing style guide, and while you’re writing a subtitle you see that it’s meant to explain, not direct, and that it should be less than 140 characters. Maybe the guidelines remind you of your brand’s friendly voice and the playful tone that titles and headers should aim for.
And maybe that’s great advice for your product. But context matters.
Maybe, in your specific case, you need to direct the user towards a specific behavior. Maybe you need more space to expand on what they can expect. Maybe you need to be a little more serious on this page.
I’m not saying style guides are pointless: they’re not. But they’re guidelines, not rules. You shouldn’t go beyond them without a valid reason, but it’s also part of your job to question whether the guidelines fit the specific brief.
Remember: clarity over consistency.
Could it be better?
Final drafts are a tricky thing. Sometimes — because of deadlines or stakeholders — you need to be okay with good enough. Other times you fiddle with the words so much they lose their meaning.
But it’s worth trying a few versions. How does it sound if you flip the order? What happens if you use this word instead of that one? What if you try to add a bit of delight to the moment?
Don’t settle for “fits the requirements.”
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