Where the eye lands first, and what to put there
A reader's eye moves across a screen in a rough pattern: along the top, down the left edge, picking up headings and the first few words of each line, then across again in shorter, thinner sweeps. Most of a page gets this glance. That means the word carrying the point of a heading or a sentence needs to sit at the front of it.
Chunk the copy into pieces a reader can take in one glance
A chunk is whatever the eye can take in without stopping to re-scan: a short paragraph, a single bullet, a line of button text. One idea per chunk is the working rule. A paragraph that runs eight sentences and covers three separate points asks the reader to do the sorting that the writer should have done, and on a screen, most readers won't bother.
Whitespace does real work here too. It marks the boundary between one chunk and the next, so the reader knows where a point ends without having to read the last sentence to find out.
Build a subheading hierarchy the reader can navigate by
A subheading is read before the paragraph beneath it. That makes the sequence of headings on a page its own summary: read only the headings, top to bottom, and a reader should be able to tell what the page covers and in what order. A major section takes a heading one level up from the sections inside it, and that nesting should reflect how the ideas actually relate.
A heading that could sit on any page about any topic (something like "Overview" or "Key information") tells the reader nothing before they've read the section, which defeats the point of having it there at all.
Use bullets for lists, not for breaking up an argument
A bullet list works when the items are genuinely parallel: steps in a sequence, criteria for a decision, options a reader is choosing between. It stops working the moment someone uses it to make three sentences look more scannable than they are. If the second bullet depends on the first, or the third contradicts the second, that's an argument wearing a list's clothing, and it reads as one once the formatting is taken away.
- Use a bullet list for steps a reader will follow in order.
- Use one for criteria they'll check off against their own situation.
- Use one for options that sit alongside each other.
- Write it as a paragraph if any item needs the one before it to make sense.
Write link text that names where it goes
"Click here" tells the reader to click. Link text that names the destination, such as a phrase pointing to the copywriter's glossary, lets a reader decide whether the link is worth following before they follow it. That matters more than it looks: a reader scanning a page for the one link they need is reading link text in isolation, out of the sentence around it, and a vague link gives them nothing to scan for.
Label buttons with the action
A button is a call to action (a CTA): the one line on the page that tells the reader what happens if they press it. "Submit" describes a form event. "Send your brief" describes what the reader is actually doing and what they should expect next. The weaker version isn't wrong exactly, it's just written from the system's point of view. How to write a call to action covers the verb choices this depends on in more detail.
Write form microcopy at the point of friction
Microcopy is the small print around a form field, a checkbox or a price: a line that isn't the headline or the body copy but still has to carry meaning. It earns its place by answering the question a reader is about to hesitate over, right where they'd hesitate. A line next to an email field explaining what it'll be used for helps because the doubt happens at the field.
Write error messages that say what happened and what to fix
"Invalid input" tells a reader something went wrong and nothing about what to do next. An error message earns its place by naming the field, saying what's wrong with it, and saying what a correct answer looks like. That's three separate pieces of information, and a message that only gives the first one is asking the reader to guess the other two at the exact moment they're already stuck.
The register matters here as much as the content. A page written warmly and directly that suddenly turns clipped and technical the moment something goes wrong breaks the reader's trust at the worst possible point. If it's hard to tell whether a button label or an error message still sounds like the rest of the page, running it through the tone of voice consistency checker flags the sentences that sit outside the register you're aiming for, with a reason for each flag.