Mailchimp-Style Copy Guide
How we write copy across all our apps, websites, marketing, and in-product surfaces. Distilled from the Mailchimp Content Style Guide — the most widely respected public style guide for product writing — and adapted for our portfolio.
Default home is app surfaces: every UI string, button, error, empty state, and onboarding line should run through this guide. The same rules apply to web, marketing, and email so the voice stays consistent end-to-end.
When in doubt, read it out loud. If it sounds weird, rewrite it.
1. The four standards
Every piece of copy should be:
- Clear — Understand the topic. Use simple words and short sentences. If a user has to re-read it, it's broken.
- Useful — Before writing, know the purpose, the audience, and the one thing they need. Cut everything else.
- Friendly — Write like a human. Break a grammar rule if it makes the line more natural.
- Appropriate — Match the register to the moment. A delete confirmation isn't the place for a joke. An onboarding tip is.
2. Voice (stays constant)
Same voice everywhere — landing page, app, email, error message.
- Plainspoken. No hyperbole, no marketing fluff. Say what the thing does.
- Genuine. Warm, not corporate. Talk like a person who actually uses the product.
- Translator. When something is technical, explain it like you'd explain it to a smart friend who doesn't work in tech.
- Dry, subtle humor. Straight-faced and a touch weird is fine. Loud, try-hard, or meme-y is not. If a joke needs explaining, cut it.
Do: active voice, plain English, positive framing.
Don't: force jokes, lean on slang or jargon, write in passive voice.
3. Tone (shifts with context)
Voice is who you are. Tone is how you read the room.
Ask: what is the user feeling right now? Confused? Relieved? Frustrated? Excited? Match it.
| Context | Tone |
|---|
| Onboarding / empty states | Warm, encouraging, light |
| Success confirmations | Brief, celebratory, get out of the way |
| Errors | Calm, specific, no blame, point to the fix |
| Destructive confirms (delete, cancel) | Sober and direct. No humor. |
| Marketing pages | Confident, benefit-led, never grandiose |
| Legal / billing | Plain and precise. Friendly framing is fine; vagueness is not. |
| Educational content | Patient, structured, never condescending |
4. Writing about people
We write the same way we build apps: person-first.
- Singular "they" when gender is unknown or irrelevant. Use whatever pronouns a person communicates; ask if you don't know.
- No "guys" for mixed groups. No "girls" for grown women.
- Neutral job terms. Server, not waitress. Businessperson, not businessman.
- Don't mention age, disability, or medical conditions unless directly relevant. When relevant, person-first ("person with a disability") unless the person prefers identity-first ("disabled person").
- Capitalize racial and cultural identities (Black, Asian, Indigenous). Lowercase "white". No hyphen in dual heritage ("Asian American").
- Never use: "suffers from", "victim of", "handicapped" (except "handicapped parking"), "lame", "crazy", "insane", "addicted to" as a casual intensifier.
- Identity terms are modifiers, not nouns. "A gay man", not "a gay". "A trans woman", not "a transgender".
- Audiences are people, not data. Use "they", not "it". Treat contacts as humans, not rows.
5. Grammar & mechanics
The practical rulebook.
Voice
- Active voice. Subject does the action. ("We sent the email" — not "the email was sent".)
- Passive is fine only when the action matters more than who did it.
Capitalization
- Sentence case for everything by default: page titles, headings, form labels, checkboxes, radios, dropdown items, menu items.
- Title case is reserved for proper nouns, product names, and primary nav items.
- Buttons: title case is acceptable for buttons across our products; pick one per product and stay consistent. (When in doubt, sentence case.)
- Lowercase: website, internet, online, email (mid-sentence), URLs, email addresses.
Contractions
- Use them. They're, you're, we'll, can't. They make copy sound human.
Numbers
- Spell out one through nine; use numerals for 10+.
- Always use numerals for times, dates, measurements, percentages, money, and ordinals (1st, 2nd).
- Commas in 4+ digit numbers: 1,000.
- Spell out fractions: two-thirds.
- Use
% not "percent" outside of headlines.
- En dash for ranges: 20–30 days.
Dates & time
- Spell out day and month: Saturday, January 24.
- Lowercase am/pm with a space: 7 am, 7:30 pm.
- Use the user's local time when shown in product. Specify the zone when ambiguous.
Punctuation
- Oxford comma, always. "Eggs, milk, and bread."
- Em dash — for asides and emphasis. No spaces around it.
- Hyphen - for compound modifiers (well-known, full-time).
- En dash – for ranges (Mon–Fri, 5–10).
- Ampersands only inside brand or company names. Otherwise "and".
- Ellipses… sparingly. Not for dramatic effect.
- Semicolons sparingly. Em dash or a new sentence usually reads better.
- Periods and commas go inside quotation marks.
- Exclamation points: rarely. One per screen, max. Never in error messages.
Pronouns
- "You" to address the user.
- "We" to refer to us / the product team.
- Never "one". Never the royal "we" for the user.
Companies & products
- Honor official capitalization (iPhone, YouTube, GitHub).
- Companies are "it", not "they".
Formatting
- Left-align body copy.
- Single space between sentences.
- Italics for product UI references ("tap Save"), titles of long works, and rare emphasis.
- Don't combine bold + italics + underline. Pick one.
- Never underline anything that isn't a link.
Positive framing
- Write what will happen, not what won't.
- "Save to continue" beats "You can't continue without saving".
- "Available on Pro" beats "Not available on Free".
6. Headlines, microcopy & web elements
Page titles & headings
- One topic per page or screen.
- Descriptive, front-load the keyword. "Edit recipe", not "Make changes to your recipe".
- Use proper header hierarchy (H1 → H2 → H3). Don't skip levels — screen readers rely on it.
Buttons & CTAs
- Verb first. "Save changes", "Add ingredient", "Send invite".
- 1–3 words ideal. 4 max.
- Be specific. "Delete account" beats "Confirm".
- Destructive actions name what's being destroyed.
Links
- Link the meaningful phrase. "See [pricing plans]" — not "[click here] for pricing".
- A blind user tabbing link-to-link should understand each one out of context.
Forms
- Labels in sentence case, above the field.
- Mark required fields with
* or "Required". Don't only mark optional ones unless most are required.
- Inline error messages: what went wrong + how to fix it. Never blame the user.
- Good: "Email needs an @ symbol."
- Bad: "Invalid input."
- Placeholder text is not a label. Don't rely on it.
Empty states
- One sentence saying what this is.
- One CTA telling them how to fill it.
- Skip the apology.
Confirmations & toasts
- Past tense, brief. "Recipe saved." "Invite sent."
- No exclamation marks. No "Yay!". The action succeeded — that's the celebration.
Errors
- Plain language. No error codes in the user-facing line (put them in details if needed).
- State the problem, then the path forward.
- Never "Something went wrong" alone. Always add what they can do.
Lists
- Numbered for sequence (steps 1, 2, 3).
- Bulleted for unordered sets.
- Parallel grammar: every item starts the same way (all verbs, all nouns).
7. Accessibility (this is copy work, not just design)
- Front-load the important stuff. First sentence carries the message.
- No directional language. "Tap Save" — not "tap the button on the right". Layouts change; left/right is meaningless on mobile, screen readers, or RTL languages.
- Plain words over clever ones. A reader with a cognitive disability, a non-native speaker, and a tired user all benefit equally.
- Spell out abbreviations on first use unless universally known (API, URL, HTML are fine).
- Alt text on every meaningful image. Decorative images get empty alt (
alt=""). Functional images describe the function ("Search"), not the appearance ("magnifying glass icon").
- Caption every video. Provide transcripts for audio.
- Don't rely on color alone to communicate state. Add an icon, label, or text.
8. Writing for translation (and just for clarity)
Even if you never translate, these rules tighten copy.
- Active voice.
- No double negatives.
- Consistent terminology — pick one word for a concept and stick with it. "Recipe" everywhere, not "recipe" / "dish" / "meal" interchangeably.
- Drop idioms, slang, clichés, sports metaphors. "Hit it out of the park" doesn't translate, and half your English-speaking audience misses it too.
- Minimize abbreviations.
- Trade brevity for clarity when they conflict.
9. The 30-second checklist
Before shipping any string, ask:
10. Patterns we keep getting wrong
A running list. Add to it.
- "Please" is usually filler. Cut it. ("Please enter your email" → "Enter your email".)
- "Successfully" is filler. ("Successfully saved" → "Saved".)
- "In order to" → "to".
- "At this time" → "now" (or just delete it).
- "Utilize" → "use".
- "Click here" → link the actual phrase.
- "Something went wrong" → say what went wrong.
- Marketing superlatives ("powerful", "seamless", "revolutionary") → describe what it does instead.