A practical checklist for microcopy

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Run through this the next time microcopy comes up.

Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

The checklist

• The small words carry a lot of the experience
• Button and error text deserve real drafting
• Reassurance next to an action reduces hesitation
• Someone is named as the owner
• There is a date to review it again

Why it matters

The small words carry a lot of the experience. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

The short version

Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. Three things worth confirming about microcopy before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Button and error text deserve real drafting — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.