Pen I write this blog post with apologies to Dale Carnegie for the play on the title of his book.

Today, Jeff Atwood writes about the difference between writing and copywriting. His essential point is that good copyrighting is marketing and is boring. Good writing on the other hand is engaging and not boring. Understand the difference?

I think this dovetails nicely into another article I read recently at A List Apart entitled Calling All Designers: Learn to Write!

Derek Powazek points out that creating a good user experience goes beyond rounded corners and visual design. Good writing is an essential part of creating a great user experience. He sites Flickr as one example of getting it right. Rather than a button that says Submit they have a button that says Get in there. That really is friendlier isn’t it.

When you think about it, using plain casual English is much more natural for people to read. How often in the real-world do you hear people asking you to submit anything except when submitting a drug test or tax forms in triplicate?

So I took a look at my blog and noticed that in the front end, there is pretty much only one button that people use on a daily basis and it said Comment. So I changed it to Leave Your Mark and sat back waiting for the accolades to roll in on the improved user experience. Anybody hear crickets?

Well it is going to take more than changing a single button to improve the overall user experience here. I will actually have to start writing well and quit using this random copy generator. But these are definitely insights I want to take into consideration when I get around to tweaking and updating the admin interface to Subtext. What are areas in which we can improve the writing? How can we improve the user experience? Little touches add up to a lot in creating a great experience.