Who writes these strings, design or copy?

Whoever writes the rest of the brand. Labels, help text and errors end up written by whoever builds the screen, because they are needed for it to work, and so they inherit nobody's voice. They belong in the same document as the rest of the content.

Does one version of these strings work for both countries?

Usually it is the better option, as long as they are written without taking either one for granted. The sentence to avoid is not the one that names a country: it is the one that assumes there is only one. And when a distinction is needed, it is made by country.

Does this show up in any number?

In how many forms get completed and how many times each error message fires. It is not a brand metric and does not claim to be, but it is the only way to know whether a new word did anything.

BRAND WebCoding · Miami

Branding and content in Miami

Brand identity and a content system for US companies. Nobody argues about the homepage headline as much as they should argue about the word sitting above the field where people get stuck.

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Branding and Content en Miami

How we work in Miami

The same technical standard and process we apply to projects of any size. What changes is the knowledge of the local market.

Two members of the WebCoding team organising ideas with sticky notes on the glass wall

State, province or region is not worse, it is more honest

A generic label sounds less elegant than the exact word for each country and works better: everyone understands it and nobody has to decide whether their case fits. The precision of a label is measured in the doubts it prevents, not in how it sounds.

The example inside the field picks who you are talking to

Help text reading 08800 explains the format and at the same time announces that this form is thinking about Spain. If it has to serve both sides, either the example changes with the country or you drop it and explain the format in words.

An error says what it expected, not that you got it wrong

Invalid value helps nobody. The ZIP code is five digits, or five plus four does, because it says what to do next. These strings are written once, read thousands of times, and are among the few things that improve without touching a line of the design.

Your own address is copy too

The contact block of a European company is read by people who do not know what a province is or what order a Spanish address goes in. With the country written last, no local abbreviations and the phone in international format, it reads just as well.

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