Making the Web Work: Designing Effective Web Applications

Chapter 12. Text and Labels: Writing for the Web and Calling Things by Their Right Names

“All writing is a process of elimination.”

—Martha Albrand

The final layer of the interface is Layer 9: Text, which includes the textual elements, such as menu titles, button names, form labels, page titles, and instructional text. Thousands of years of history have shown the written word to be an effective and useful form of communication, but in the practice of interface design, it can also be a seductive crutch. Although it invariably fails to improve the situation, adding text as a way to “explain” an otherwise poor design is an omnipresent temptation.

The design challenge in this layer centers on two concerns: when to speak and what to say. When to ...