Copy review playbook: checks, templates and learning from corrections
Status: canonical execution document for this organization; the Research log holds its passes. Use it to write or review any website, product, email or agent-facing copy. The rules it checks live in Principles; the process that produces the positioning and message house lives in From product strategy to page copy. Checklists and templates are distilled from the source notes, mainly content design and copywriting working rules.
Before you write or review
Read the product's owners first: its voice document, its glossary, its message house and its claims register, in the product's organization. This organization gives method, never a product's words.
Name the reader, their awareness stage, the entry point and the one idea the surface must carry. If you cannot, stop and write the audience brief (template).
Check the claim against its owner. A product claim that no live check or owner backs is not published.
The review in five passes
Reader pass. Who arrives, from where, knowing what? Does the first screen say what it is, who it is for and why it matters, in the first seconds, when visitors are most likely to leave (Nielsen 2011)?
Structure pass. Clarity, relevance, value, differentiation, in that order (Wynter). Headings carry the argument alone (layer-cake scanning) (Pernice 2019). Proof sits beside the claim it supports.
Sentence pass. Plain words, actors as subjects, active voice by default, positive form, sentences under 25 words, front-loaded (working rules). No stock landing-page words, no AI tells (list below).
Consequence pass. Legal floor (fake urgency, unverified reviews, reference prices, cancellation, withdrawal button) (legal context); AI disclosure where it applies (AI legal floor, disclosure checklist); accessibility (link purpose, headings, alt text) (WCAG); localization (no concatenation, room for German expansion, one address form).
Write each finding as: surface and location, what the reader would misunderstand or do, the rule it breaks with its source, the proposed text, and its severity (blocks publication, fix before next release, note).
Microcopy checklist (per screen or pull request)
Sources: microcopy patterns, plain language, German specifics and the working rules of the content design note.
Purpose
The user need and the user's likely state on this screen can be named.
Every string earns its place; nothing only repeats the interface.
The most important word comes first in each heading, label and message.
Use-case pages pass the use-case page checklist.
Buttons and links
Verb plus object, predicts the result, two to four words; no OK, Yes or No, Submit, or a bare "Get started".
The same action has the same label everywhere; destructive actions name what they destroy.
Link text makes sense out of context; no "click here" or lone "Learn more".
Forms
Visible labels above fields; placeholders only for format examples.
Optional fields marked "(optional)"; hints only where most users need them.
Sensitive data requests say why they are asked.
Errors and validation
Say what happened and how to fix it, in the words of the field label.
Shown next to the problem, after the user finishes, with accessible indicators.
No blame, no "invalid" or "oops", no bare error code; the user's input is kept.
System failures say what we are doing and what the user can do now.
States
Empty state: status, why, primary action. An empty state never assumes a step the user has not taken.
Loading, no results, no permission and offline each have their own copy.
Success confirmed briefly, with at most one flourish.
Dialogs and notifications
Confirmation only for irreversible actions; consequence stated; buttons name the actions; undo considered first.
Notifications relevant to this person, batched and controllable; subject or title front-loaded.
Voice and tone
Matches the product's voice chart; the tone fits the situation's row in the tone map.
No jokes in errors, billing or data loss; no hype adjectives; no "simply", "just" or "easy".
Read aloud, it sounds like a helpful person.
Plain language
Sentences under 25 words; active voice unless the actor is irrelevant; positive form.
Jargon defined or removed; readability score used only as a smoke alarm.
Prices and limits stated in the reader's units, with numbers; German prices pass the price display checklist.
Localization
All strings externalized; no concatenation; plural and select messages as full sentences with named placeholders.
Layout survives text 40 percent longer than the English, labels of up to 10 characters two to three times as long or more, and long German compounds (length expansion).
German: one address form per product, gender handled by direct address or neutral wording first, infinitive buttons, German date and number formats.
Translator notes or screenshots for ambiguous strings.
AI-assisted copy
A person edited the draft against the voice chart.
Free of AI tells (list below); every claim backed by a product fact.
Accessibility and agent readers
Headings make sense out of context; meaning never depends only on colour, position or an image; alt text written.
Agent-facing files stay current and state limits honestly; tool descriptions and agent errors pass the tool-description checklist.
AI-assisted drafting
Put the voice chart, the glossary and five "this, not that" pairs in the prompt; give the model the facts (need, current state, what happens next). Models invent benefits when facts are missing.
Ask for several variants, choose one, then edit it yourself.
Ban and lint the tells: delve, crucial, pivotal, intricate, underscore, tapestry, showcase, enhance, seamless, effortless, unlock, elevate, empower, leverage, robust; "serves as" in place of "is"; "not just X, but Y" and "this is not X, it is Y" constructions; lists padded to three; heavy bold; em dashes (AI-era writing).
Fix the vagueness under the words, not only the words. Most readers are near chance at spotting AI text, and detectors make real errors (Signs of AI writing); the reader still notices emptiness.
Voice and tone template (one page per product)
Fill it in the product's organization; this is the empty form.
Product, languages, German address form (du or Sie, applied to UI, email, legal pages and support), gender approach (direct address, then rephrasing, then neutral nouns, then pair forms; typographic forms only if the audience expects them), reading level target (grade 7 to 9 in English for general readers, up to grade 12 for specialists (readability targets); Einfache Sprache in German).
Who we write for: primary readers, what they know and do not know, typical states (rushed, anxious about money or data, expert).
Product principles (three or four), and what each means for words.
Voice attributes (constant): "We are [x] but not [y]" three times, for example direct but not curt, warm but not chummy, expert but not jargon-heavy.
Default position on the four tone dimensions (formal to casual, serious to funny, respectful to irreverent, matter-of-fact to enthusiastic). Evidence: trustworthiness explained far more of desirability than friendliness; casual but serious beat formal (NN/g tone study).
Voice chart, one column per attribute: what it means, what it does not mean, words we use, words we avoid, sentence length, grammar habits, punctuation, capitalization, one "this, not that" pair.
Tone map: first run or empty state (curious: encouraging, brief); success (relieved: warm, one flourish at most); validation error (mildly annoyed: plain, specific); system failure or data loss (worried: serious, accountable, next step); payment or billing (cautious: precise, neutral); destructive confirmation (hesitant: explicit consequence); marketing or pricing page (evaluating: concrete, no hype); AI feature output (unsure: neutral, states limits).
Word list: use, do not use, German term. One term per concept; the product glossary is the source.
Banned words: the AI-tell list above plus simply, just, easy, "please note", "oops", "invalid"; German: "einfach nur", "spielend leicht", "Hoppla", "ungültig" (say what is expected).
Mechanics: dates and numbers per locale; buttons verb plus object in two to four words (German infinitive); errors say what happened and how to fix it.
Ownership: voice owner, review cadence, where the document lives.
Learn from corrections
After a real copy task, when a founder, reviewer or test corrects the copy:
Record the correction as a case in the product's organization: original, correction, why, and whether it generalizes.
If it generalizes beyond the product, update the owning rule in Principles (rewrite the rule as if it had always been known) and append the evidence to the Research log.
If it contradicts a source, add a Conflicts entry instead of overwriting either side.
Keep labels distinct: illustrative (written here), shipped (in production), and reader-observed (tested with real people).