--- name: brand-copy description: "Write and review clear house-style product and marketing copy. Use for UI strings, buttons, labels, errors, onboarding, release notes, App Store copy, emails, or copy rewrites." --- # Mailchimp-Style Copy Guide How we write copy across all our apps, websites, marketing, and in-product surfaces. **Distilled from the [Mailchimp Content Style Guide](https://styleguide.mailchimp.com/)** — the most widely respected public style guide for product writing — and adapted for our portfolio. Default home is **app surfaces**: every UI string, button, error, empty state, and onboarding line should run through this guide. The same rules apply to web, marketing, and email so the voice stays consistent end-to-end. When in doubt, read it out loud. If it sounds weird, rewrite it. --- ## 1. The four standards Every piece of copy should be: - **Clear** — Understand the topic. Use simple words and short sentences. If a user has to re-read it, it's broken. - **Useful** — Before writing, know the purpose, the audience, and the one thing they need. Cut everything else. - **Friendly** — Write like a human. Break a grammar rule if it makes the line more natural. - **Appropriate** — Match the register to the moment. A delete confirmation isn't the place for a joke. An onboarding tip is. --- ## 2. Voice (stays constant) Same voice everywhere — landing page, app, email, error message. - **Plainspoken.** No hyperbole, no marketing fluff. Say what the thing does. - **Genuine.** Warm, not corporate. Talk like a person who actually uses the product. - **Translator.** When something is technical, explain it like you'd explain it to a smart friend who doesn't work in tech. - **Dry, subtle humor.** Straight-faced and a touch weird is fine. Loud, try-hard, or meme-y is not. If a joke needs explaining, cut it. **Do:** active voice, plain English, positive framing. **Don't:** force jokes, lean on slang or jargon, write in passive voice. --- ## 3. Tone (shifts with context) Voice is who you are. Tone is how you read the room. Ask: *what is the user feeling right now?* Confused? Relieved? Frustrated? Excited? Match it. | Context | Tone | |---|---| | Onboarding / empty states | Warm, encouraging, light | | Success confirmations | Brief, celebratory, get out of the way | | Errors | Calm, specific, no blame, point to the fix | | Destructive confirms (delete, cancel) | Sober and direct. No humor. | | Marketing pages | Confident, benefit-led, never grandiose | | Legal / billing | Plain and precise. Friendly framing is fine; vagueness is not. | | Educational content | Patient, structured, never condescending | --- ## 4. Writing about people We write the same way we build apps: person-first. - **Singular "they"** when gender is unknown or irrelevant. Use whatever pronouns a person communicates; ask if you don't know. - **No "guys"** for mixed groups. No "girls" for grown women. - **Neutral job terms.** Server, not waitress. Businessperson, not businessman. - **Don't mention age, disability, or medical conditions** unless directly relevant. When relevant, person-first ("person with a disability") unless the person prefers identity-first ("disabled person"). - **Capitalize racial and cultural identities** (Black, Asian, Indigenous). Lowercase "white". No hyphen in dual heritage ("Asian American"). - **Never use:** "suffers from", "victim of", "handicapped" (except "handicapped parking"), "lame", "crazy", "insane", "addicted to" as a casual intensifier. - **Identity terms are modifiers, not nouns.** "A gay man", not "a gay". "A trans woman", not "a transgender". - **Audiences are people, not data.** Use "they", not "it". Treat contacts as humans, not rows. --- ## 5. Grammar & mechanics The practical rulebook. ### Voice - **Active voice.** Subject does the action. ("We sent the email" — not "the email was sent".) - Passive is fine only when the action matters more than who did it. ### Capitalization - **Sentence case** for everything by default: page titles, headings, form labels, checkboxes, radios, dropdown items, menu items. - **Title case** is reserved for proper nouns, product names, and primary nav items. - **Buttons:** title case is acceptable for buttons across our products; pick one per product and stay consistent. (When in doubt, sentence case.) - Lowercase: website, internet, online, email (mid-sentence), URLs, email addresses. ### Contractions - **Use them.** They're, you're, we'll, can't. They make copy sound human. ### Numbers - Spell out one through nine; use numerals for 10+. - Always use numerals for times, dates, measurements, percentages, money, and ordinals (1st, 2nd). - Commas in 4+ digit numbers: 1,000. - Spell out fractions: two-thirds. - Use `%` not "percent" outside of headlines. - En dash for ranges: 20–30 days. ### Dates & time - Spell out day and month: Saturday, January 24. - Lowercase am/pm with a space: 7 am, 7:30 pm. - Use the user's local time when shown in product. Specify the zone when ambiguous. ### Punctuation - **Oxford comma, always.** "Eggs, milk, and bread." - **Em dash —** for asides and emphasis. No spaces around it. Use sparingly — a string peppered with dashes reads as filler. - **Hyphen -** for compound modifiers (well-known, full-time). - **En dash –** for ranges (Mon–Fri, 5–10). - **Ampersands** only inside brand or company names. Otherwise "and". - **Ellipses…** sparingly. Not for dramatic effect. - **Semicolons** sparingly. Em dash or a new sentence usually reads better. - **Periods and commas** go inside quotation marks. - **Exclamation points:** rarely. One per screen, max. Never in error messages. ### Pronouns - **"You"** to address the user. - **"We"** to refer to us / the product team. - Never "one". Never the royal "we" for the user. ### Companies & products - Honor official capitalization (iPhone, YouTube, GitHub). - Companies are "it", not "they". ### Formatting - Left-align body copy. - Single space between sentences. - Italics for product UI references ("tap *Save*"), titles of long works, and rare emphasis. - **Don't combine** bold + italics + underline. Pick one. - **Never underline** anything that isn't a link. ### Positive framing - Write what *will* happen, not what *won't*. - "Save to continue" beats "You can't continue without saving". - "Available on Pro" beats "Not available on Free". --- ## 6. Headlines, microcopy & web elements ### Page titles & headings - One topic per page or screen. - Descriptive, front-load the keyword. "Edit recipe", not "Make changes to your recipe". - Use proper header hierarchy (H1 → H2 → H3). Don't skip levels — screen readers rely on it. ### Buttons & CTAs - **Verb first.** "Save changes", "Add ingredient", "Send invite". - 1–3 words ideal. 4 max. - Be specific. "Delete account" beats "Confirm". - Destructive actions name what's being destroyed. ### Links - **Link the meaningful phrase.** "See [pricing plans]" — not "[click here] for pricing". - A blind user tabbing link-to-link should understand each one out of context. ### Forms - Labels in sentence case, above the field. - Mark required fields with `*` or "Required". Don't only mark optional ones unless most are required. - Inline error messages: what went wrong + how to fix it. Never blame the user. - Good: "Email needs an @ symbol." - Bad: "Invalid input." - Placeholder text is not a label. Don't rely on it. ### Empty states - One sentence saying what this is. - One CTA telling them how to fill it. - Skip the apology. ### Confirmations & toasts - Past tense, brief. "Recipe saved." "Invite sent." - No exclamation marks. No "Yay!". The action succeeded — that's the celebration. ### Errors - Plain language. No error codes in the user-facing line (put them in details if needed). - State the problem, then the path forward. - Never "Something went wrong" alone. Always add what they can do. ### Lists - Numbered for sequence (steps 1, 2, 3). - Bulleted for unordered sets. - Parallel grammar: every item starts the same way (all verbs, all nouns). --- ## 7. Accessibility (this is copy work, not just design) - **Front-load the important stuff.** First sentence carries the message. - **No directional language.** "Tap *Save*" — not "tap the button on the right". Layouts change; left/right is meaningless on mobile, screen readers, or RTL languages. - **Plain words over clever ones.** A reader with a cognitive disability, a non-native speaker, and a tired user all benefit equally. - **Spell out abbreviations on first use** unless universally known (API, URL, HTML are fine). - **Alt text on every meaningful image.** Decorative images get empty alt (`alt=""`). Functional images describe the function ("Search"), not the appearance ("magnifying glass icon"). - **Caption every video.** Provide transcripts for audio. - **Don't rely on color alone** to communicate state. Add an icon, label, or text. --- ## 8. Writing for translation (and just for clarity) Even if you never translate, these rules tighten copy. - Active voice. - No double negatives. - Consistent terminology — pick one word for a concept and stick with it. "Recipe" everywhere, not "recipe" / "dish" / "meal" interchangeably. - Drop idioms, slang, clichés, sports metaphors. "Hit it out of the park" doesn't translate, and half your English-speaking audience misses it too. - Minimize abbreviations. - Trade brevity for clarity when they conflict. --- ## 9. The 30-second checklist Before shipping any string, ask: - [ ] Would a stranger understand this on first read? - [ ] Is the most important word in the first three? - [ ] Active voice? - [ ] No directional language ("above", "to the right")? - [ ] Sentence case (unless it's a proper noun or button)? - [ ] Oxford comma where needed? - [ ] No exclamation marks I can't defend? - [ ] If it's a button, does it start with a verb? - [ ] If it's an error, does it tell the user what to do next? - [ ] Read it out loud — does it sound like a person? --- ## 10. Patterns we keep getting wrong A running list. Add to it. - "Please" is usually filler. Cut it. ("Please enter your email" → "Enter your email".) - "Successfully" is filler. ("Successfully saved" → "Saved".) - "In order to" → "to". - "At this time" → "now" (or just delete it). - "Utilize" → "use". - "Click here" → link the actual phrase. - "Something went wrong" → say what went wrong. - Marketing superlatives ("powerful", "seamless", "revolutionary") → describe what it does instead.