Stylistics | Nucleus Design System

Use active voice

In general, always try to use an active voice. It’s clearer and stops sentences from becoming too complicated or wordy.

An exception to this rule is when writing to remove culpability, so as not to blame a partner or third-party, or imply ownership of a certain action or outcome.

ie “Jira rejected your token.” vs. “Your token was rejected by Jira.”

In this case, to soften the wording, we could allow the second.

✅ Do Add features to your product.	🛑 Don't Features can be added to your product.
✅ Do The engineering directors made several important decisions at the meeting.	🛑 Don't At the meeting, several important decisions were made by the engineering directors.
✅ Do The Stargate team will manage the next five releases.	🛑 Don't The next five releases will be managed by the Stargate team.
✅ Do Fast-scaling organizations use Productboard.	🛑 Don't Productboard is used by organizations that scale fast.

Avoid slang and jargon

Jargon is industry-specific “insider” language that can only be understood by people in a certain group. Slang is very informal, often inspired by the internet or culture trends, and can be specific to a generation. We prefer to stay away from both of these to make our language universal.

✅ Do Been looking for a way to customize workflows and share products with select audiences? With product permissions you can do just that.	🛑 Don't Dude, our new feature is lit. Check it out.
✅ Do Product managers have zero spare time. If we don’t meet our customers’ needs, we’re at risk of losing them.	🛑 Don't That customer totally ghosted us.
✅ Do Still wasting time updating sheets and presentations? Cut down hours of unnecessary menial work weekly, and focus on strategy, vision, and go-to-market plans instead.	🛑 Don't Increase your GA – spend more time to spend on things like your value prop, MVP, GTM plans, and more.

Idioms

Idioms, proverbs, and expressions are a rich playground for copy fun, however – since they’re not literal, they rely on a native level understanding of English. Therefore, we should consider when to use them wisely.

For example, in product writing this may be blank states or loading messages, in other words, touchpoints when there is a low-risk to creating potential confusion, and a welcome space for light humour or friendliness. Don’t use them near CTAs or conversion points.

Productboard’s social media channels in different languages are also great opportunities for idioms. After all, they’re a natural part of daily speech. And being natural and human involves an odd idiom or two. See what we did there?

In the localizations section, you’ll find our stance on using idioms in different languages.

✅ Do Email subject: Back to the drawing board? Dear [person], Not this time. Let you customers tell you exactly what they need. Productboard uses ML and data analytics to comb through customer Insights and identify feature opportunities.	🛑 Don't Don’t miss the boat. [Download now]

Educate

We’re creating a new category and also have our own Productboard lingo. We can’t possibly expect customers to know what we mean right off the bat, so where possible, take any opportunity to educate – both on our language and how to use the product. If you use technical or Productboard specific language, try to explain.

✅ Do Productboard’s ops team likes to make sure you have a great experience with our products. One way we do this is with shards, or partitions, that help us better horizontally scale our database infrastructure.	🛑 Don't Productboard’s ops team is constantly scaling our servers with shards.
✅ Do Link the most interesting parts of your customers’ feedback, or insights, straight to relevant feature ideas.	🛑 Don't Create insights in Productboard to drive feature idea development.

Be clear and specific

Less is more. Also, consider that the magic is to be found in knowing what to leave out. Where possible, be specific. Being vague and general is unhelpful and bland.

✅ Do Your token was rejected.	🛑 Don't Either Jira or Productboard rejected your token.
✅ Do Unfortunately, the authorization failed. Start the integration process again in Productboard [using these guidelines] carefully.	🛑 Don't Something went wrong. You’ll have to revoke all application links in Jira, and then start the integration process again in Productboard. :/

Be consistent

Choose one consistent verb per action and noun per subject. Make sure you decide on either shorthand or full text, and always abide by the same singular vs. plural form across the UI.

✅ Do Delete product Delete feature Delete field	🛑 Don't Delete products Delete this product Remove product
✅ Do Workspace Workspace Workspace	🛑 Don't Workspace Space Productboard workspace

Be inclusive and respectful

Use the word “inclusive” or “accessible” to describe design, products, services and places designed to provide a more equal experience to everyone. Be respectful of age, health conditions, heritage, and race. Avoid describing social class, or price points in an on the nose way.

✅ Do This functionality doesn’t speak to the older demographic.	🛑 Don't Oldies don’t really go for this functionality.
✅ Do Our Essentials plan offers great value.	🛑 Don't Our Essentials plan is really cheap.
✅ Do Use "accessible parking space" instead	🛑 Don't Use this "disabled parking space"
✅ Do Our aim is to help companies build products for those living with mental illness.	🛑 Don't Our aim is to help companies build products for those struggling with mental illness.