The Dash: How would a dog write error messages? 🐶

This is the published edition of our weekly UX writer and UX writing newsletter, The Dash. Sign up to The Dash to have these updates sent straight to your inbox!

Important reminder: If the ship can get out of the Suez canal, you can get through your content design conundrums. We don’t want you to miss the boat on this week’s content goodness, so we’ll get right to it. Sorry, we had to.

How would a dog write error messages? How would a bird use punctuation? Jane Ruffino is at it again with this tabletop exercise to help develop your product’s voice, tone, and style. Check out the Miro file and get to writing.

404! Issue 2. What happens when error messages read more like poetry? This is probably the zine you were looking for. Grab the second issue, handmade and assembled by Andy Welfle. Discover an existential error in the wild? Submit it to be featured!

We are all this ship now. We’ve never identified with anything more before. The 1,300+ foot-long boat is one big metaphor for how a lot of us have been feeling lately, in life and in work—stuck. Just this week, Ever Given broke free and is back on track to continue its charter. The mighty ship is also a great reminder for how we can end up stuck in our projects, processes, or workflows. Moral of the story? Keep that momentum and keep chugging along. Great reads from Prototypr.io, UX Collective, and Interaction Design Foundation.  

Are your words working? Well, content research and testing is the best way to find out. Come hang out with us at Confab to hear from our very own Patrick Stafford. You’ll learn at least five different testing methods and how to present your findings to stakeholders. See you there!

Invite everyone to the interface. Good UX writing does ju