Language and capitalization

Language and capitalization is critical for user understanding of an interface. This topic will discuss language best practices, including spelling, grammar, capitalization, and wording of messages and headings.

Confusing language on interfaces is a common problem that will certainly interfere with quality. Consistent language requires correct spelling, grammar, capitalization, and wording of messages and headings.

Language in software should have a consistent tone, mood, or attitude. We want our users' focus to be on the data and actions on the screen. While it's tempting to be chatty, funny, cute, or verbose, we should be clear and businesslike.

One thing to consider is that in most media-- for instance in a video-- it's always clear who is doing the talking, and the direction of the conversation. If a person in a video asks the question "What is my name?", it's very clear what the request is. If another person is on camera, we assume the first person is asking the second person, and if the first person addresses the camera, we may assume the question is for us, the audience.

Software, however, is unusual, as the text of the prompt, such as a button or a field label, is provided by a developer but then actioned by an end-user. Thus, if a field appears on a screen with the label "What is my name?" it's not immediately obvious whose name is being requested. The developer's name? The end user's name? The uncertain target of the question is distracting and could cause confusion.

Best-practice is for language in our UIs to make sense from either perspective and therefore contextual to both the system and the user. A button reading: "Check my messages" is wrong, but "check messages" is correct. This also simplifies the language by removing a word, which is good.

Capitalization needs to be consistent. Many users will be confused if capitalization is not consistent throughout an application. Casing should follow your design system standards. 
Pega follows the Microsoft standards for capitalization, which are to use sentence-style capitalization most of the time. Sentence style requires that you capitalize the first word of a sentence, heading, UI label, or standalone phrase, but everything else is lower case.

You should capitalize proper nouns such as the application name, people's names, case types, and microjourneys, and the h1 heading (the title of the page).

So-called CamelCase capitalization should never be visible in any UI. Please do not use CamelCase, ever.

Spelling and grammar need to be checked on every interface. Incorrect spelling is confusing to users and sends a clear message that the developers did not care.

Take time to observe if all text is actually readable. This example shows a menu that is constructed in a way that makes reading the menu items impossible.
Messages are critical feedback to users. They alert us to whether a submission was successful or if there was an error. Error messages should be explicit regarding what the error was and provide instructions on how to fix the problem. Proper grammar and spelling should be provided. If your team is not comfortable checking grammar or spelling, ask someone from design or documentation to work on this. Never expose technical terms or code to end users. You should test your UIs by attempting to fail on purpose (leaving out required fields) to expose error messages.

Good interfaces always provide feedback after a user has fired an action or has navigated somewhere. Feedback for the return of an empty data set is very important to business applications; no values matched is just as important to a user as returned values.

Check your knowledge with the following interaction.