September 21, 2021 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #319
This newsletter issue was sent out to 178,630 subscribers on Tuesday, September 21, 2021.
Editorial
Great writing is at the heart of every great interface. With a good choice of words, we can do more than just communicate our thoroughly crafted messages. By choosing the right voice and tone, we can express our attitude and our gratitude. By being concise and precise, we can help resolve issues. By being welcome and warm-hearted, we can build loyalty, trust and relationships.
In this newsletter, we look into good copywriting. We explore how to write inclusive, accessible products, how to optimize microcopy, the tooling to assist and maintain copywriting as well as a bit of friendly microcopy and email copy inspiration.
We’ll also look at microcopy in our upcoming free workshop on Frustrating Design Patterns in 2021 with yours truly, a free 2.5h-long online session in which we’ll explore common frustrations that we experience on the web daily, and some smart design patterns to fix them for good. Register for free, add the event to your calendar, and don’t be late!
And if you are interested in web performance, we have our free web performance meet-up coming on Thursday, September 30, 9:00 AM PDT. With sessions on HTTP/3, image optimization and the performance culture by Tammy Everts, Addy Osmani and Robin Marx.
— Vitaly (@smashingmag)
1. Writing Inclusive, Accessible Products
Read your writing out loud. That’s the number one advice that Nick DiLallo gives to anyone who writes digital products. It not only helps you detach from your work to catch things you might have missed, but it’s also an approximation for how a screen reader works, and, thus, the first step to making sure your interface doesn’t leave anyone out.
However, even if you do read your writing out loud, there are still some writing pitfalls you might not be aware of that could make users feel unincluded. Nick summarized valuable tips to help you change that and ensure your copy is inclusive and accessible. They are easy to put into practice and make a real difference. (cm)
2. Optimizing Button Microcopy
Button microcopy needs to be clear and concise, it motivates the user to take action, and it anticipates user issues. Maria Panagiotidi shares seven useful tips to help you write button microcopy that achieves just that.
Using action verbs and task-specific language to prevent misunderstandings even when users only scan the text and employing microcopy to build transparency and trust are just two of the aspects that Maria covers in her post. A great overview of how powerful a small piece of text can be — and how much more you can get out of it with just some little tweaks. (cm)
3. A Single Source Of Truth For Your Product Copy
How do you and your team handle and maintain product copy? Do you have a strategy to keep everything in one place so that everyone involved always has the newest copy at hand? Or is your product copy scattered across documents, mockups, and tickets? In this case, Ditto could be worth taking a closer look at.
Ditto provides a single place to manage product copy in all of its stages. You can create a reusable text component library, manage text in mockups, track all copy changes, and review and discuss edits. Two-way Figma sync makes sure that the right copy is always in your mockups, while Ditto’s API, CLI, and SDKs allow developers to fetch up-to-date copy and integrate it into their build processes. No more back-and-forth, no more copy-and-paste. (cm)
4. Upcoming Front-End & UX Workshops
You might have heard it: we run online workshops around front-end and design, be it accessibility, performance, navigation, or landing pages. 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 an overview of our upcoming workshops:
- FREE: Frustrating Design Patterns in 2021 UX
with Vitaly Friedman. September 27. - Accessible Front-End Patterns Masterclass Dev
with Carie Fisher. September 30 – October 14. - Designing Landing Pages That Sell Design
with Rob Hope. October 5–19. - Level-Up With Modern CSS Dev
with Stephanie Eckles. October 5–20. - Jump to all online workshops →
5. A Generator For Friendly Microcopy
Sometimes, all you need is a little inspiration boost. Speak Human might be the perfect place to find it for your copywriting needs. For example, for confirmation messages, respectful interruptions and gentle reminders.
To get inspired, just select a purpose from a dropdown, and the generator presents you with a piece of clever, human-centric microcopy — a friendly way to ask users for their email, for example, or a small piece of e-commerce copy that stands out from the crowd. Quick and easy. (cm)
6. A Plugin To Assist You With Copywriting
We all know those situations when the blank fields in a beautifully polished layout design make us sweat. How to fill them with meaningful content? With words that engage your users and, in the best case, put a smile to their faces? Alex Tasevski and Zlatko Najdenovski built a little plugin for Adobe XD that helps you master the challenge: UI Copy.
The plugin proposes content for your design — tailored to your product’s tone and voice. So no matter if you need to keep things corporately serious or are aiming for something more casual and witty, UI Copy has got you covered.
Of course, it would be foolish to say that a plugin could replace a professional copywriter, but for those occasions when you want to avoid showing lorem ipsum to your clients and stakeholders, it’s a fantastic little helper. And who knows, maybe the suggested content will spark your imagination and you’ll come up with just the right words to make your product uniquely yours? (cm)
7. Email Copy Inspiration
Do you need some email copy inspiration? Then Good Email Copy is for you. Whether it’s welcoming your users on board, confirming their order, or asking them to provide feedback on your product, the site features email copy for all kinds of purposes.
The featured examples all come from real emails that companies like Slack, Pinterest, Zendesk, or Etsy sent out. You can browse them by tag or search for inspiration by entering a keyword. New ideas guaranteed. By the way, if you have an email in your inbox that you think might be worth sharing, you can contribute it to the collection. (cm)
8. Handy UX Writing Resources
The field of UX writing might not be that often talked about as other aspects in the UX field, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a lack of quality material to improve your skills. To help you stay on top of the game, the UX Writing Library collects handy UX writing resources.
Curated by UX writer and microcopy expert Kinneret Yifrah, the library features everything from books, blogs, podcasts, and inspiration to communities and events all about UX writing. All of the resources were tried firsthand or have received great reviews from the community. One for the bookmarks. (cm)
That’s All, Folks!
Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!
This newsletter issue was written and edited by Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf) and Iris Lješnjanin (il).
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