The overall tone for our UI copy is 'business conversational'—the way people might talk in a normal office. It's not stuffy or overly formal, nor is it casual or relaxed.

• Do:
  • Strive for clarity and brevity.
  • Use a healthy sprinkling of contractions along with non-contraction forms.
  • Be human-centered. Think about the way you might describe something to a trusted colleague.
  • Prefer simpler, shorter descriptions and labels over complex or technical ones.
  • Address users directly: “You don't have any recently viewed items.”
• Don't:
  • Be goofy, ‘cool,’ or quirky. Remember: our users are professionals, and so are we.
  • Go overboard with exclamation points.
  • Write copy that sounds like it was written by a robot.

• Be specific.
  • When writing button labels, link titles, error messages, etc., be as specific and straightforward as possible about what happened or will happen.
  • “Please complete all required fields” is better than “There was a problem saving your changes,” and “A valid email address is required to complete this form” is even better.
• Front-load buttons, labels, and links.
  • When creating labels for actions or data, try to mention the most relevant and distinctive actions and objects first, and omit unnecessary and duplicative words. Front-loading UI copy helps users to quickly scan and process a complex interface.

• Use sentence case for all UI elements unless otherwise indicated (form labels and section subheads are two major exceptions).
  • Numbers are considered capital letters for the purpose of beginning a sentence/phrase.
  • When the title of a UI element is used in a sentence, the capitalization from the element itself should be utilized: ‘Visit the Events tab for more information.’ is correct, ‘Visit the events tab for more information.’ is not.
• Always end full sentences with periods.
• Short phrases, such as in a bulleted list, do not require a period.
• Product, group, and manufacturer names are proper nouns and should be capitalized as such.

• Use curved rather than straight quotation mark and apostrophe symbols whenever possible, especially in headline copy.
  • Do: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
  • Don’t: "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
• Always use a single space after a sentence, never two.

• Dates can be represented in a variety of formats, to be chosen based on the context:
  • For conversational situations, fuzzy date formats (e.g. '3 days ago') can be used.
  • When included in a paragraph or other body text, ‘September 18, 2014’ is preferred.
  • When brevity is desired (as in labels, etc.), the ‘Mmm DD, YYYY’ format is preferred: ‘Feb 20, 2015’
  • Use numeric-only formats (12/11/16) for tables.
  • Do not include leading zeroes (e.g. '01/01/16' or 'Feb 02') when displaying days or months.
• Names should be listed alphabetically by last name, and displayed as ‘Firstname Lastname.’ When a user is listed as a physician, their name should be displayed as ‘Dr. Lastname.’
• Numbers should be comma-separated whenever possible, including currency: $42,682.
• Times should be written as ‘4:32 PM’ and should be displayed in the user's local timezone whenever possible. If the time references something important (like a meeting start time), explicitly display the timezone as well: 'US/Central.'
• Ranges between numbers, dates, currency values, etc. should be separated using an en dash and no additional white space: ‘12–24’
• URLs: Don't display raw URLs unless the intention is to give the user something to copy and paste (e.g. a share link). If linking to an external site, it's acceptable to display just the domain as the link title (e.g. 'medtronic.com').