We’ve made our writing system available to all

We’re sharing how we write in our app with writers, designers, engineers and everyone else in case they find it helpful.

We take words pretty seriously at Monzo. Every word matters when you’re a bank that lives on a phone because what we say, and how we say it, make for a huge part of the customer experience.

It’s not just the Writing team that minds its language either. Everyone who works here knows that language matters. We have a whole page of our website dedicated to our writing principles and every person who joins Monzo – no matter how senior they are or which area of the business they’re joining – completes writing training in their first two weeks.

We’ve got writing guidance for emails, internal Slack messages, technical proposals, social media content, terms & conditions and more. And today we’re making one of our newest resources open to everyone!

Our writing system covers how we write words in our app and it’s now publicly available in Figma.

If you’ve spent even a minute in the world of product design or product development, you might have heard or read something to this effect: good design is a thing you don’t even notice.

Buttons are the same size and shape. Colour is used consistently so you recognise when something’s gone right or wrong. And where there are words, the language is easy to read and understand.

‘At its core, a design system is a set of building blocks and standards that help keep the look and feel of products and experiences consistent’. - Chad Bergman, Figma

A writing system is the same; it’s the word version of a design system.

If you’re a product designer working somewhere where there isn’t writing support at-hand, having a cheatsheet for how to use words in your product might just be the thing you need to keep the overall quality of your experience high.

Having consistent components saves us all time and gives the people who use our app a better, well designed experience.

Our writing system clearly outlines all the main word components we use in our app with writing best practices for each so that how we speak in our app stays as consistent, inclusive and accessible as possible.

The guidelines in our system are (mostly) universal best practices that you can apply to writing in (pretty much) any app. Which means pretty much anyone can benefit from them. 

Full disclosure before we go much further: We’re not the only brand to make its writing system available like this. Mailchimp, Google and Shopify all have writing guidance that anyone can access. Do check them out, they’re great.

Before you jump into the system itself, there are 3 principles which run through all of our guidance that we think you should know. In fact, if you remember nothing else, remember these principles and whatever you’re working on will be better for it.

1. Keep your writing short


You want to make sure that every word on the screen earns its seat at the table.
Writing in apps often means stringing a sentence in cramped conditions and when characters are at a premium, you need to get thrifty.

2. Write in the active voice

Saying who did the thing is clearer, fairer and shorter than not saying who did the thing. So instead of saying ‘the payment was blocked’, we say ‘we blocked the payment’.

3. Be consistent


Familiarity helps people do things faster. And it builds trust, which is an especially important currency when you’re a bank.


Take the time to research the words your customers use and reflect them in your writing. User interviews, usability tests, A/B testing, customer support conversations, online forums or Google searches are all good ways of learning the lingo.

We designed the system to let you zoom right into a particular component that you’re writing for, get the guidance you need and get on with the job at-hand.

There are sections on push notifications, buttons, errors and more, with best practices for each and even some bonus research/evidence for some.

Try it out for yourself and if you find it helpful or have ideas for how we could improve it, we’d love to hear from you.

Feel free to comment directly in Figma or you can drop us a message on the Monzo Community site.