/microcopy

The words are the interface. Everything else is arrangement.

Buttons name the outcome

“Submit” describes what the form does. “Send invitation” describes what the user gets. The label should complete the sentence “I want to…”, which also makes destructive actions honest: “Delete 4 files” is a button you can trust in a way “OK” is not.

This matters most in confirmation dialogs, where “Cancel” and “OK” routinely mean the opposite of what a scanning reader assumes.

Say the number

“Are you sure?” is a question with no information in it. “Delete 4 files? This cannot be undone.” lets the user check the count against what they selected — which is the actual thing they are unsure about.

Cut the throat-clearing

“Please note that in order to continue you will need to verify your email address” is “Verify your email to continue.” The first version is not more polite; it is just longer, and length reads as friction.

Voice is consistency, not personality

A product does not need jokes. It needs to sound like one person wrote it — the same word for the same concept every time. Calling it a project in the nav, a workspace in settings and a board in the empty state is three products in a trenchcoat.