8General writing tips

8.1Be confident and friendly

Sound natural. Be colloquial but remain professional. Use the product or service you write for. Test it, play with it. Try to break the things you want to communicate about. This is the easiest way to be confident in your copy, because you will gain more knowledge about the product than your readers have. It will make your tone genuine and trustworthy.

When you sit to write, ask yourself how you would explain the content to a friend. Avoid formal, technical language and strive for accuracy.

For example, instead of telling your friend that "Opera now supports H.264", prefer "Opera supports more high-definition videos". They are more likely to respond to natural speech.

Vary the rhythm and cadence of your text to keep it lively. Think of how you talk in casual conversation. Normally, your sentences will vary between short and long, complex and simple. This balance makes you sound natural and friendly.

Use short phrases for transactional appeals. For example:

Avoid text, SMS, or chat room slang. You may feel like this makes your copy "hip" or "closer to the voice of our target audience", but this type of language achieves the opposite. Slang disintegrates trust with your audience. It makes your communication look unprofessional and conveys that unprofessional impression into the quality of Opera's products or services.

Don't offend or condescend. Avoid curse words. Be inclusive and avoid sexism, racism, bigotry, or prejudice. Generally, write as though your mother, father, auntie, etc. will read your work. If they can understand the message, you're on the right track. For example:

Avoid:

8.2Be concise

Remove extraneous words or phrases (even whole sentences!) that do not directly add to the clarity or meaning of your communications. Conciseness does not always mean that you should be brief, rather that you should abstain from being wordy. Concise writing fosters a reader's coherence of your objectives. Wordiness fosters confusion.

To avoid wordiness, be wary of modifiers that repeat the meaning of the noun they describe. Some examples:

basic essentials, final outcome, present status

The same idea applies to modifiers that repeat the meaning of coordinating modifiers:

each and every, one and only, forever and ever

Choose the correct word and modifiers may be rendered unnecessary. Expletives, and relative pronouns and adjectives contribute to wordiness, as well. Remove these and the meaning of your communication will be conveyed quickly:

Avoid omitting important words or phrases. Less words convey meaning faster. Conversely, omitting necessary articles, pronouns, conjunctions, and transitions will confuse the reader. Be vigilant in your revisions, and make sure that readers don't need to supply any important words themselves while they read. For example:

Does this mean that the reader should adjust the lever or also grasp an "adjust lever"?

Avoid dummy auxiliaries by using active verbs:

8.3Use active voice

Active voice means that the subject, or noun, of the sentence performs the action, or verb. For example:

Passive voice means that secondary subject, or the object, of the sentence performs the action, or verb, on the primary subject, or noun, of the sentence. Do you see how this is already destroying clarity? For example:

Even more confusingly, passive voice allows the actor to be removed from the sentence entirely. For example:

Questions may arise from this type of writing, especially when casual readers skim the page. Without context, the above example does little to orient the reader. Whose extensions? The extensions of what? What stopped them?

Beyond this, passive voice makes translation difficult and can easily confuse readers about the intention of the communication.

In English, active voice elicits transaction. Employing active voice cuts down the number of words in a sentence and naturally spurs readers into taking action.

8.4Use positive phrases

The language surrounding Opera and its products or services should empower users and make them feel supported. To this end, communications should always remain positive.

Casual readers often misread negative phrases, like "does not", "can not", "will not", "has not", "is not", etc. David Oglivy's famous example illustrates this:

If, for example, you write OUR SALT CONTAINS NO ARSENIC, many readers will miss the negative and go away with the impression that you wrote OUR SALT CONTAINS ARSENIC. – Confessions of an Advertising Man

Negative writing can turn readers off and give them a bad impression of Opera. For example:

8.5Prefer calls to action

Calls to action are short phrases that persuade a reader to do something. At their most basic, calls to action can be one word – "Download". Think of them as commands. These phrases are helpful when formatting links and have been adopted for subsection headers at Opera.

Calls to action place the verb first and imply the subject "you". For example:

Adding detail about what you want the reader to do can increase responses, and aids accessibility for screen readers. In the case of subsection headers, details to the call to action can help the reader scan pages and locate information quickly. For example:

The most effective calls to action accurately describe what you want the reader to do. If you want them to apply for a job by downloading an application, then the call to action shouldn't be "Apply here". You should accurately describe the step you want them to take – "Download an employment application".

8.6Prefer plain language

Strive to lessen barriers between your readers and the value of your content. Write in "plain language" by omitting obscure vocabulary, words with Greek or Latin roots, and complex sentence structures.

It is more difficult to write simply and directly. But, the benefits will be immediate. Your readers will engage more with your content.

Check that your writing falls into a lower reading level. Use a tool like Readability Score to ensure your content is around a 4th-grade reading level (on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scale). Higher reading levels require greater effort to comprehend. As the reading level increases, reader engagement drops.

8.7Use consistent terminology

Opera terms are defined in the Opera-specific terms list. These terms standardize how Opera communicates products, services and feature names, as well as user-interface elements, affiliate and partner names, common web terms and more. Prefer these terms in your copy over how our partners or competitors speak, and certainly over how technical journalists speak.

If you cannot find a term in the list, consult Merriam Webster's dictionary before proceeding with a new term or definition.

The trending words that surround industry communications may not be known by your audience. You'll create more meaning and give your content a longer shelf life by avoiding industry jargon. For example:

When the trend of using "mobile" as a noun dies out, articles or releases that are created with lasting grammatical constructions will still be relevant.

Never use product names as a verb. For example: "Coast around the web with Opera Coast". Changing a product name into a verb makes the term generic, weakens the brand, and, in the worst case, may nullify our trademark. Avoid this practice and you'll have a better relationship with the Legal team.

Stay aware, up to date, and knowledgeable about recent campaigns, communications, and branding messages about products on official channels. This will help Opera to remain consistent and evolve together as a directed organization.

8.8Don't overpromise

Avoid making claims without supporting data. For example, "Opera is the fastest browser" is outrageous and indefensible. On the other hand, "Opera is one of the fastest browsers" is acceptable.

Take care when using firm numbers. Any copy with claims containing numbers or percents should be reviewed by the product or service team and the Legal team before publishing.

8.9Avoid run-on sentences

A run-on sentence occurs when two or more complete sentences appear without punctuation separating them. The easiest way to correct a run-on is to add a period between each sentence. For example:

Sentences that have more than one independent clause separated by a comma are considered run-ons. They are a special breed we call a "comma splice". To correct them, replace the comma with a period, or add a conjunction. For example: