August 15, 2023 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #418

Editorial

Words matter. Sometimes we rely on labels and calls to action that appear to be obvious and self-explanatory. Yet too often, they come from assumptions that clash against reality and sometimes come across at best as inconsistent and at worst as confusing, disrespectful, and inconsiderate.

In this newsletter, we’d like to shed some light on wonderful resources on UX writing — resources that can help us write better copy, avoid confusion, and maximize clarity.

We’ll be exploring UX writing and UX in general in a few of our upcoming events as well:

• Smashing Hour on Sustainable UX (Tue, Aug 15) (free community event) with Asim Hussain,
• Smashing Meets: Magical UX (Sep 14) (free) on design tokens and UX,
• SmashingConf Design & UX  (Antwerp, Belgium, Oct 9–12), our shiny new conference on design & UX,
• Smart Interface Design Patterns, video course and UX training (Sep 8–Oct 6),
• Accessibility For Designers, online workshop with Stéphanie Walter (Nov 6–15),
• …and many other friendly and practical online workshops.

In the meantime, thank you so much for reading — and let’s explore a few useful bits around UX writing!

— Vitaly

1. The Micropedia Against Micro-Aggressions

Words are everything on the web. Yet when we choose words poorly, when the words come from implicit bias or stereotypes, it can come across as insulting and disrespectful, although you might not mean it this way at all. How can we prevent these things from happening?

The Micropedia highlights comments and actions that are based on stereotypes, assumptions, and lack of empathy across age, disabilities, class, ethnicity, gender, indigenous people, race, religion, and 2SLGBTQ+. With plenty of examples to keep in mind. A huge thank-you to the team behind the project working on it! (vf)

2. Plain Language Guidelines

Plain language makes it easier for your audience to read and understand your content. But how to achieve that? How to write clearly? That’s exactly what the Plain Language Guidelines attempt to answer. An initiative by the US government, Plain Language features practical tips to take your writing to the next level, covering everything from researching your audience to testing assumptions.

In the first step, you’ll learn to better understand who you are writing for. You’ll then move on to organizing information and making it easy to follow. The actual writing principles make for the most extensive section, starting at the word level and moving up through paragraphs and sections. A comprehensive overview with lots of examples that illustrate how small tweaks make a huge difference for your readers. (cm)

3. Bias-Free Language

We have learned to check our writing for spelling, grammar, and wordiness, but what about bias? The American Psychological Association published a guide to bias-free language that helps you identify bias and write about people without creating it.

The guide dives deep into addressing the individual characteristics of age, disability, gender, participation in research, racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Practical writing examples of problematic and preferred wording help you make bias-free language a natural part of your writing routine. (cm)

4. Good Microcopy

No interface without microcopy. Whether on buttons, in error messages, or form fields, microcopy is everywhere, providing context and helping users reach their goals. If you’re looking for examples of how to master the craft of providing real value in just a few words, the site Good Microcopy has got you covered.

Curated by Richard Sison, Good Microcopy showcases examples of, well, great microcopy. And not only that, Richard also explains what makes each of the examples stand out. It might be an “I’ll do this later” button that reduces friction when a user is eager to quickly try out a service they have signed up for or a newsletter signup that reduces anxiety when handing over an email address by including a friendly “Once or twice a month. 100% goodness. 0% spam” underneath the signup button. A treasure chest of microcopy gems. (cm)

5. Cohesion In UX Writing

Driving cohesive narratives across all touchpoints within a product is a skill that is often required in UX writing job posts. But what does cohesion mean? And how to achieve it? Marina Nevolina takes a closer look.

In her post “Cohesion in UX Writing,” Marina explains the term cohesion and the four key aspects you need to keep in mind when thinking of it: consistency, voice, flow, and predictability. To put it all into practice, Marina shows how she enhanced cohesion and fixed inconsistencies in a real-world project she worked on. Practical tips for UX writers and everyone who delivers content for a project. (cm)

6. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Advanced JavaScript Masterclass Dev
  with Christophe Porteneuve. Aug 16–30
• Live Interface Design Patterns UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 8 – Oct 6
• Accessible Components from Design to Dev Dev
  with Carie Fisher. Sep 14–22
• Typography Masterclass UX
  with Elliot Jay Stocks. Oct 16–30
• Strategizing Products and Customer Experiences (SPACE) UX
  with Debbie Levitt. Oct 18–26
• Smart Interface Design Patterns UX
  9h-video + Live UX Training with Vitaly Friedman
• Jump to all workshops →

7. Readability Guidelines

What if there was a central place where the community shared knowledge and created a universal content style guide that was accessible, usable, and evidenced? That was the idea Sarah Winters of Content Design London had back in 2018. The result is the Readability Guidelines wiki.

For the Readability Guidelines, content collaborators from multiple sectors worked together to answer readability questions and develop a set of consistent guidelines to improve readability and usability. The topics covered range from clear language and grammar points to content design and images. You can explore the wiki’s more than 100 guidelines or get involved in the project to help it evolve. (cm)

8. UX Writing Resources

Do you want to dive deeper into UX writing? Then Content Designer Resources is for you. Created by the UX Content Collective, the collection features UX writing tools, free webinars, articles, podcasts, and resource libraries to help you improve communication with your users.

Another handy resource is the UX Writing Library, a collection of books, blogs, communities, online courses, events, podcasts, newsletters, and more to give you a current and focused overview of UX writing. Whether you’re about to take your first step into UX writing or are looking to stay on top of what’s happening in the field, these two resources certainly won’t let you down. (cm)

9. Smashing Books (Print + eBooks)

Promoting best practices and providing you with practical tips to master your daily coding and design challenges has always been at the core of everything we do at Smashing.

In the past few years, we were very lucky to have worked together with some talented, caring people from the web community to publish their wealth of experience as printed books. Have you checked them out already?

• Understanding Privacy by Heather Burns
• Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces by Steven Hoober
• Image Optimization by Addy Osmani
• Jump to all Smashing Books →