Voice and Tone
The Sabre Voice
Our voice is human. It’s smart, friendly and straightforward. In the context of our applications, we use language that guides users and helps them advance toward achieving their goals.
Sabre is:
- Clever, but not silly
- Confident, but not arrogant
- Smart, but not scholarly
- Brilliant, but not formal
- Helpful, but not overbearing
Understanding Tone
There’s a difference between voice and tone. You might speak in one tone to your closest friends and family, and a different tone with your boss. You have the same voice all the time, but your tone changes.
In the context of our applications, we might speak in one tone when confirming that a user wants to delete a transaction but speak in another when they’ve successfully signed up for an account. The Sabre voice doesn’t change much throughout our applications, but our tone changes based on context.
Writing Content
When writing instructions, feedback, notifications and other content for our applications, apply the following best practices:
Be Positive
- Use positive language that focuses on advancing users toward their goals rather than pointing out mistakes.
- Use clear messaging that instills confidence in users rather than causes them to have doubts about what action to take and/or what the consequences of an action will be.
- Use encouraging messages to provide users with a sense of accomplishment and break up tedious tasks.
Be Concise
- Users often skip over instructional text so keep content as brief as possible.
- Use bulleted lists to make longer messages easier to scan.
- Use the concept of progressive display to reveal additional details only as the user needs or requests them.
- Use clear labels for form controls to avoid the need for instructions.
Be Clear
- Use simple language rather than words that are likely to be unfamiliar to users.
- Write with an awareness of international users.
- For professional applications, more complex and/or business-specific words that are commonly understood by the users are acceptable.
Be Human
- Refer to the user as a person (“you”)
- Use personalized messaging, especially in the context of signing in, home screens and dashboards to show users that we know them.
- Rewrite sentences to avoid references to “the system.”