Insight Style Guide¶

Headlines¶

• Punctuation: Headlines should not end with punctuation.

• Yes: Adam Pash’s road to 150,000 friends
• No: Adam Pash’s road to 150,000 friends.

• Capitalization: Headlines should be written in sentence case.

• Yes: It’s a new 7-day high
• No: It’s a New 7-day High

• Content:

• Make it personal: Whenever possible, include specific information from the insight in the headline — in particular, the names of friends/followers, interesting numbers, etc.
  • Yes: A big retweet for %other_user
  • No: You deliver a big retweet
• Be brief: Insights are short as is — don’t try to shoehorn the entire insight in the headline. The headline should draw interest — it’s the appetizer; the body is the main course.

• Sentence structure: The headline should be a simple sentence or fragment.

• Simple sentence examples:
  • it’s a new 30-day high!
  • %other_user lends a hand
  • %total links you %liked
  • you’ve got a new verified follower!
  • %other_user thinks you’re likeable

Fragments should likewise be brief, often with an implied subject/verb along the lines of “it’s” or “you’ve got”.

• Examples:
  • a friendly boost for %other_user
  • a congrats-worthy %post
  • your %total-month-old profile
  • an old favorite from %other_user

• Length: Headlines should be, at most, 100 characters. More often than not, they will be much shorter than this.
• Refer to the user, not her posts: Avoid referring to things like “tweets” and “status updates” in headlines. It distances the user from the thing we’re discussing, but at its heart, the posts are a proxy to you, and people are reacting to you, not just your tweets.

• Yes: %other_user thinks you’re likeable
• No : %other_user thinks your %posts are likeable

• Second person: When using forms of “you” in headlines, remember that “you” will also need to be replaced by a username, so be conscious of that replacement, especially related to verbs. Here are translations that work:

• you => %user
• your => %user’s
• you’re => %user is
• you’ve => %user has
• you’ll => %user will

Always keep an eye out for instances where the second-to-third-person translation will not work. E.g.:

• you do a good job => %user do a good job

Body¶

• Be complete: The body of the insight should stand on its own. It should not refer to information that’s only available in the headline.

• Yes:
  • Headline: It’s been a big week in tweets
  • Body: %username tweeted over 40 times last week. That’s 12 more than the prior week.
• No:
  • Headline: %username had 12 tweets over the past week
  • Body: That’s 1 more tweet than the prior week.

• Be active: Use active, rather than passive, language.

• Yes: %user resonated with women
• No: %user got the most reaction from women