Word choices

Wondering if you're removing or deleting something? Adding it or creating it from scratch? Wonder no more!

Add or Create

We use "add" for adding things that already exist (no matter if in Emplifi or the outer world).

We use "create" for creating things from scratch:

Do

Don’t

Caution

Agent, Admin, Supervisor, Client, Customer, User

Agent – real-life people who use Emplifi products to get in touch with their customers, for example, Community, Social Care or Agent

  • Admin – sometimes, you may come across admin as well, but let's try to avoid this and replace it with Agent when possible

Supervisor – someone who manages agents

Client - Emplifi’s clients, our paying customers who purchased our product, an internal term used heavily, it’s rather a company than an individual user of the platform

  • ⚠️❗️ Client 360 → Customer 360: a tab in Customer Care informing our clients about their customers

Customer – a real-life person who’s reaching out to our clients, buying products from them, reaching out to customer support

User

a) In the product, we use the word “user” to denominate social media users. An example tooltip:

You can tag relevant Instagram users in the picture

b) Emplifi platform users; we say "users" to denominate specific people from our clients’ side who use the Emplifi platform:

You can add new Emplifi users in Settings

WIP Apply labels, add users, assign labels to users

⚠️ This is tricky inside the platform and needs to be evaluated and probably edited in the Label section insides settings

Apply

Apply label to content, apply label to label group, apply a label to profile

Add

Add a user to label

Assign

Assign a label to a group, assign a profile to label, assign a profile to a group

To Add profile label means to create a profile label (or content label or a label group)

Edit or Manage

Use ​edit when the user directly changes the physical attributes of an element so that it in the end looks different.

When users ​manage something, the changes are rather contextual than physical, like where an element lives or who’s allowed to see it.

Source: Hudl

Remove or Delete or Disconnect

In most cases, you'll be considering remove or delete. In some exceptional cases, there might be some other words to choose from.

Remove or Delete

When the removal is permanent and can't be reversed, we use delete.

When removing a social profile, we use remove. The user is removing it only from our platform, and they can add it again if they want.

Users

When the user is about to remove another user (or another word for such) from the platform, we say Remove user. We never delete users.

However, try to avoid such combinations whenever possible.

❌ The author of this query set was removed from the platform.

✅ The author of this query set is no longer a user of the platform.

Disconnect

To be as clear as possible, when removing data sources, we disconnect data connections.

Do

Don’t

Caution

View or See or Show

Use view whenever possible.

Show is acceptable when used as an opposite to hide.

Use see in general, conversational descriptions without a specific call to action.

View

Use view whenever possible. This way you’re encouraging the marketer to go to a specific page or section for more details, or to reveal more information.

Use view in buttons, calls to action, and link text. It’s user-focused, clear, and more widely used than ​“see” or ​“show.”

See

Use the verb “see” in more general, conversational descriptions without a specific call to action.

Show

Show is acceptable when used as an opposite to ​hide. This convention may apply for example when we have collapsible content in an interface or for showing done messages.

Examples

Show done messages

View the post on Facebook (View on Facebook)

As you can see…

Source: Polaris and Hudl

 

Log in versus login, log out versus logout, break down versus breakdown, etc.

To log in, log out is a phrasal verb, login, logout is an adjective.

To break down is a verb describing an action that leads to a breakdown, which is a noun.

Examples

You'll need login credentials to log in to the app.

You can break data down by profile or language. The profile breakdown is only available in combination with the language breakdown.

Sorry, please, unfortunately, and the others

Do not overuse words such as sorry, please and unfortunately. Only use them when the situation is really complicated or requires extra effort from the user.

Compare:

Please enter your name –> Enter your name (as an empty input error message)

Facebook does not allow third-party apps, like Emplifi, to display this content type. You can still check it directly on Facebook.

We're having unexpected issues. Please come back in an hour and if the issue continues, contact our support.

Do

Don’t

Extra resource on saying sorry: https://medium.com/honestbee-design/why-not-to-say-sorry-in-error-and-info-messages-11151047f01a