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Skillshuman-copywrite

human-copywrite

Writing & research

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Updated 10-16 03:46

About this skill

Human Copywrite

Editorial style and usage guidance distilled from the Apple Style Guide (June 2025). Use it whenever you're producing text a human will read.

When to Apply

Trigger this skill whenever the output is text a human will read. Specifically:

  • UI strings & error messages — button labels, dialog text, empty states, onboarding copy. Voice and UI-vocabulary rules apply.
  • User-facing documentation — help articles, READMEs, onboarding guides, tutorials. All rules apply.
  • Developer documentation — API references, SDK guides, code comments meant for humans. Add the technical-notation rules.
  • Marketing copy — feature announcements, landing pages, release notes. Voice, capitalization, and product-name rules are load-bearing.
  • Localized content — anything that will be translated. The international-style rules become primary.
  • Writing about Apple platforms — even if the surrounding product isn't an Apple product, refer to Apple hardware/software by Apple's preferred forms (iPhone, iPad, macOS, App Store).

If the user is writing code with no user-facing strings, skip this skill. If they're writing a function name or variable, that's not copywriting — that's naming, which lives elsewhere.

Core Principles

These run through every section. When in doubt, fall back on them.

  1. Active voice, present tense, second person. You can connect your iPhone to a Mac. Not Your iPhone may be connected to a Mac.
  2. Specific over generic. Choose File > Save. Not Use the menu to save the file.
  3. Plain words over jargon. Turn on over activate. Log in over authenticate (unless authenticate is technically precise).
  4. Don't make the product the subject of an action the user takes. You can create a database with FileMaker Pro. Not FileMaker Pro allows you to create a database.
  5. Items appear on screen — they don't display. The setup assistant appears. Not The setup assistant is displayed.
  6. Don't restate what code does — say why. Applies to code comments.
  7. Respect product names verbatim. AirPods (not Airpods), iCloud (not iCloud+ unless you mean the paid tier), Apple Pencil (not the Apple pencil).
  8. Numbers ≥10 stay digits; <10 spell out — but with many exceptions (numbers-and-dates.md).
  9. Compound modifiers preceding a noun are hyphenated; following the verb they're not — user-friendly app, the app is user friendly.
  10. In code, never use a function name as a verb. Run ls on both directories — not ls both directories.

How to Use

Always read this SKILL.md first, then load the topic file(s) relevant to the current task. For one-off term lookups, jump to references/a-z-lookup.md and follow its pointer to the topic file.

Topic files

File When to read
voice-and-tone.md Any user-facing prose. Most copy decisions live here.
punctuation.md Deciding on em dashes, en dashes, ellipses, commas, colons, apostrophes, quotes.
capitalization.md Writing headings, titles, button labels, or proper-noun-adjacent terms.
hyphenation-and-compounds.md Compound modifiers, e- and re- prefixes, user-friendly vs user friendly.
numbers-and-dates.md Writing dates, times, ranges, ordinals, percentages, fractions, decades, 2D, 4K, 24/7.
units-of-measure.md Quoting GB, MHz, mm, inches, etc. Full SI unit/symbol table.
word-choice-and-confusables.md Pairs like affect/effect, backup/back up, login/log in, OK, email, online.
abbreviations-and-acronyms.md When to spell out, file types, plurals, articles. Includes industry acronyms (URL, ISP, JPEG, etc.).
ui-elements.md Vocabulary for buttons, menus, sheets, popovers, sidebars, controls.
apple-products.md Apple hardware names: iPhone, iPad, Mac, MacBook, Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Pencil, etc.
apple-features-software.md macOS, iOS, iCloud, Apple Music, Siri, AirDrop, Apple Intelligence, Genmoji, and all Apple software/services/features.
technical-notation.md Developer documentation: code font, syntax descriptions, placeholders.
international-style.md Localized or international content: ISO country/currency/language codes, ISO 8601 dates, telephone numbers.

A-Z lookup

For a single term ("How do I write backup vs back up?"), open references/a-z-lookup.md and follow the pointer to the topic file with that entry.

Gotchas

See gotchas.md. One scope note worth knowing up front: the source's "Writing inclusively" chapter (pronouns, person-first vs identity-first language, replacements for blacklist/whitelist and master/slave) was intentionally excluded from this skill at ingest time.

Source

Apple Style Guide, June 2025 (243 pages). Distilled and re-organized by topic for selective loading. Source content is preserved verbatim where reproduced. The web version of the guide is at https://support.apple.com/guide/applestyleguide/welcome/web.