A superb blog in form and content, outlining why "Copy is Interface" by Daniel Burka. The list of best practices should be memorized by every developer of user interfaces. If you haven't got writing skills, then find someone who has, or hire someone, if possible. Or apply any best practices or available guidelines, carefully.
Language (tone, style, and terminology) in the user interface (UI) is a critical part of an application's user experience. Getting the langauage right from the beginning of the development process, ensures it stays right. Of course, language must be tested interatively, too. But, getting language wrong at the beginning, or adopting the Lorum Ipsum approach, well... the Swiss cheese model of language defects tells it all...
Swiss Cheese Model of Language Defects. Source: Des Traynor's User Interface Engineering "Microcopy" presentation.
Partners and customers are working closely with the Oracle Applications User Experience team to identify the optimal toolkit to ensure that when they need to tailor the language in the user interface of their applications, they can do so simply and without the need for a major IT project or budget catastrophe. And, for enterprise applications developers who need guidance and practical resources on key UI terminology and their context so that they can build their own optimized Cloud UIs (be they desktop, simplified, or mobile) well, that kind of guidance is being discussed and readied too.
At the recent Oracle Applications User Experience communications and outreach team's Oracle Partner Advisory Board inaugural meeting in the UK, the importance of language in the UX was underscored. Not just in English, but in all languages.
37 Signals'Getting Real gets the importance of language to UX right too with the chapter called "Copywriting is Interface Design", and the Translation is UX website reminds us that UX is global and language excellence must be too.
For those interested in how language needs to be nuanced for the enterprise UX, and some of the approaches that can be taken, check out the Blogos article, "Working Out Context in the Enterprise: Localize That!".
Stay tuned for more on language as UX enablement from the outreach and communications team in 2014.