Android's Voice
When writing text that appears in your app, keep it concise, simple, and friendly.
Concise
- Describe only what the user needs to know.
- Eliminate redundancy, such as titles that restate the body of an information box.
- Keep text as short as possible.
Avoid wordy, stilted text
Don't
| Consult the documentation that came with your phone for further instructions. |
Do
| Read the instructions that came with your phone. |
Don't provide unnecessary information
From a Setup Wizard screen
| Signing in... |
|---|
|
Your phone needs to communicate with
Google servers to sign in to your account. This may take up to five minutes. |
From a Setup Wizard screen
| Signing in... |
|---|
|
Your phone is contacting Google.
This can take up to 5 minutes. |
Simple
- Use short words, active verbs, and common nouns.
- Put the most important thing first. “Front-load” the first 11 characters with the most salient information in the string.
- Don’t try to explain subtle differences. They are lost on most users.
Focus on the user's concern, not technical details
Don't
| Manually control GPS to prevent other apps from using it |
Do
| To save power, switch Location mode to Battery saving |
Put top news first
Don't
| 77 other people +1’d this, including Larry Page |
Do
| Larry Page and 76 others +1’d this |
Put the user's goal first
Don't
| Touch Next to complete setup using a Wi-Fi connection |
Do
| To finish setup using Wi-Fi, touch Next |
Friendly
- Use contractions.
- Talk directly to the reader. Use “you” to refer to the reader.
- Keep your tone casual and conversational, but avoid slang.
Avoid being confusing or annoying
Don't
| Sorry! |
|---|
|
Activity MyAppActivity (in application
MyApp) is not responding |
Do
| MyApp isn’t responding |
|---|
| Do you want to close it? |
Words to avoid
| Don't use | Use |
| one, two, three, four, ... | 1, 2, 3, 4, ... |
| application | app |
| cannot, could not, do not, did not will not, you will | Contractions: can’t, couldn’t, don’t, didn’t won’t, you’ll, and so on |
| okay, ok | OK |
| please, sorry, thank you |
Attempts at politeness can annoy the user, especially in messages that say
something has gone wrong.
Exception: In Japanese, “please” is mandatory and imperative verbs should be localized accordingly (turn on -> please turn on). |
|
there is, there are, it is
and other “disappeared” subjects (grammatical expletives) |
Use a noun as the subject |
| abort, kill, terminate | stop, cancel, end, exit |
| fail, failed, negative language |
In general, use positive phrasing
(for example, “do” rather than “don’t,” except in cases such as “Don’t show again,” “Can’t connect,” and so on.) |
| me, I, my, mine | you, your, yours |
| Are you sure? Warning! | Tell user the consequence instead, for example, “You’ll lose all photos and media” |
Formatting text
Capitalization
- Use sentence-style capitalization for all UI strings: “Words to live by.”
-
Capitalize all important words in:
- App names (Calendar, Google Drive)
- Named features (Android Beam, Face Unlock)
- Proper nouns (Statue of Liberty, San Francisco Giants)
-
Be conservative. Don't capitalize words that aren't part of a formal feature name:
- Sim card lock, Home screen, not Sim Card Lock, Home Screen.
Punctuation
- Period. Don't use a period after a single sentence or phrase used in isolation, such as in a toast, label, or notification. Wherever two or more sentences run together, use a period for each sentence.
-
Ellipsis.
Use the ellipsis character (…) (Option-; on MacOS and …
in HTML) to indicate
- Incompleteness, such as an action in progress (“Downloading...”) or truncated text.
- That a menu item (such as Print… or Share…) leads to further UI involving significant choices. Exception: Commands whose wording already implies further (but limited) UI, such as Find in page or Pick a date , do not require an ellipsis.