

Ask HN: Resource for writing text for web applications? - Bookington

Does anyone have a good resource for writing for web applications? I&#x27;m talking about the help text strings, error messages, etc. I&#x27;m just wondering about best practices and best phrasing:<p>E.g., &quot;Successfully purchased product&quot; versus &quot;You have successfully purchased this product&quot; for a confirmation message.<p>Thanks!
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eivarv
IIRC, Shneiderman and Plaisant touch upon this somewhere in their book
"Designing the User Interface" [0], and Schneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of
Interface Design" [1] may also be applicable. You might additionally want to
look into resources that deal with copywriting.

[0]: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-User-Interface-
Internation...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-User-Interface-
International-Human-
Computer/dp/1292023902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434056870&sr=8-1&keywords=Designing+the+User+Interface)

[1]:
[https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/goldenrules.html](https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/goldenrules.html)

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bzalasky
You should read _The Elements of Content Strategy_ by Erin Kissane. It's from
A Book Apart. As for shorter display copy, starting with a simple, clean
writing style is a great start. From there, validate the assumptions you make
with your initial copy. You can use tools like Kissmetrics or Optimizely to
test how successful different approaches are.

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dorfuss
Super idea for a side project! Thanks!

