Why the Smallest Words Matter Most
Ask any developer how to build a great website and you’ll get a dozen answers: snappy animations, cutting-edge CSS, bold gradients, vibrant illustrations. Those things can certainly elevate a site—but none of them matter if the text on the page isn’t doing its job. No matter how sophisticated the underlying technology becomes, a truly great website is always built on great writing.
That’s why, when I’m trying to figure out how to improve a project, I always land on the same principle: care for the text.
Poor writing makes a site harder to read, harder to navigate, and harder to remember. Without it, a website barely functions as a website at all. Yet it’s easy to neglect this in day-to-day work—especially when polishing prose isn’t in your job description. But every single <p> tag and <button> element is a chance to write something genuinely useful, considerate, or even a little witty.
Treating Every String Like a Playground
There’s no shortage of places where thoughtful copy matters: commas and smart quotes, form labels, typography, even input placeholders. It can feel overwhelming, but the payoff is worth it.
Consider a simple example. We once needed to introduce a new feature with a pop-up component. The rational choice was to drop in our standard pop-up and explain the update. But I knew that regardless of how valuable the new feature was, customers would still find the interruption annoying.
After mulling it over, I realized the solution was to acknowledge that friction directly in the copy:
I could have just slapped a “Dismiss” button on that pop-up and called it done. But our small team of writers at Sentry constantly reminds me that even the most mundane block of text can be a playground. Even a throwaway dismissal label has potential. It won’t change the world, but it transforms something predictable and yawn-worthy into something a little more human.
Context Is the Real Rule
That approach isn’t right for every situation, though. If you’re checking out on a site to order medication, you probably don’t want a quirky poem or a button that cracks jokes at your expense. In that context, caring for the text means something entirely different: staying out of the user’s way while being as efficient and empathetic as possible.
The same principle applies to every footer link, every navigation item, every <alt> tag, and every subtitle. Each requires deliberate attention, because these small details accumulate. They’re what take a good website and push it into being a great one.
