Tone of voice

Clarity, confidence, and commitment

Communicate clearly.

Communicate with confidence.

Don’t be wishy-washy.

George Orwell has good advice in his essay, Politics and the English language:

  • Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  • If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  • Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  • Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  • Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Clarity

Use short sentences most of the time. Use plain language.

Try not to use jargon. Watch out for abbreviations and initialisms in particular.

Sometimes a bit of industry-specific jargon is okay. If you’re writing something intended for your peers, using initialisms like UX and CSS is fine. But don’t assume that everyone knows JTBD means jobs-to-be-done.

Confidence

There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. We don’t want to be arrogant, but we definitely don’t want to be wishy-washy.

You’re an expert. I know it’s not very British, but you should own your expertise. If you’re worried that you might sound cocky, that’s okay. That probably means you're presenting your opinion with just the right level of confidence.

Commitment

You’re not writing a legal document. You don’t have to include every possible interpretation.

Decide what’s most important. Cut the rest.

Watch out for filler phrases like ‘However…’, ‘Therefore…’, ‘As such…’, ‘At the end of the day…’

Use the active voice. If you can add ‘by zombies’ to the end of a sentence, you’re probably using the passive voice:
Write ‘We made mistakes’ rather than ‘Mistakes were made’ (by zombies).

Style guide

Try not to capitalise words unless they’re the name of a person or a company:
Write about product design and user research instead of Product Design and User Research.

Use sentence style for headlines—don’t capitalise every word:
‘Starting design work in a spreadsheet’ rather than ‘Starting Design Work in a Spreadsheet’.

Use the gender-neutral ‘they’ if you’re talking about a hypothetical person:
‘When a designer starts out, they face a number of challenges’ rather than ‘when a designer starts out, she faces a number of challenges’.

Use contractions liberally. If you avoid contractions completely, you might sound like a robot or a Vulcan:
‘we’re based in Brighton’ rather than ‘we are based in Brighton’.

Verbing weirds language. Action is a noun. Invite is a verb.
Write ‘we did the work’ rather than ‘we actioned the work’.

Write ‘Clearleft is…’ rather than ‘Clearleft are…’.
But try to rewrite the sentence to say ‘we are…’.

Write out numbers that are less than or equal to twenty. Spell out numbers from 21 upwards.
Write ‘five ideas for better workshops” rather than ‘5 ideas for better workshops’.

Avoid ableist language like ‘lame’, ‘crazy’, or ‘mental’:
‘it was a wild project!’ rather than ‘it was a crazy project!’

Here are some suggested substitutions:

Punctuation

The most important guideline is to be consistent. If you use punctuation in a certain way on, say, bulleted lists or quotes, make sure you do it consistently. You can choose to ignore any of the following guidelines; just make sure you’re consistent about it.

Bulleted lists

If a bulleted list is listing full sentences use a full stop at the end of each sentence:

  • Make a plan.
  • Execute the plan.

But if a bulleted list is listing words or phrases, don’t add any full stops, commas or semicolons:

  • planning
  • execution

In either case, write an introductory sentence for the bulleted list that ends with a colon.

Dashes

You can use em-dashes to enclose subclauses — like this one — within a sentence. Technically the em-dash should have a thin space on either side of it, but feel free to use a regular space, or no space at all, just as long as you’re consistent. The keyboard shortcut for an em-dash on the Mac is command, control, and the += key. Or you could copy and paste this: —

You could also use en-dashes to enclose subclauses – like this one – if you prefer. That’s more common in the UK. Use spaces on either side of the en-dash. The keyboard shortcut for an en-dash on the Mac is the option key and the -_ key. Or you could copy and paste this: –

Whichever you choose, be consistent!

Definitely use en-dashes for ranges of numbers, like the dates of an event:
“UX London, June 22nd – 23rd”

Quotes

Use single quotes for quotations. If a sentence ends with a quoted word or phrase, the full stop goes after the closing quotation mark. like this:
It’s not by accident that our values include ‘learn, share’ and ‘feed your curiosity’.

Hypertext

Links

Try to avoid using phrases like ‘click here’ or ‘read more’ for link text. Instead try to use a piece of text that makes sense as a title.

Instead of:
‘Read more about our work with Sage.’

Do this instead:
‘Read more about our work with Sage.’

Images

Always include alt text for an image.

The sentence should describe the contents of the image. Don’t start alt text with ‘A picture of…’ or ‘An image of…’

One sentence is usually good. Finish the sentence with a full stop, the same as you would do for any other sentence.

Here are some examples:

People sitting around in the dappled sunshine on the green grass in a park with the distinctive Indian-inspired architecture of the Brighton Pavilion in the background, all under a clear blue sky.

A profile shot of Adekunle wearing a jacket and baseball cap standing outside.