Voice & tone
Copy in a clinical interface is a safety surface. It is read by someone interrupted, tired, at distance, and about to make a decision — and it is the layer where the software either respects the limits of what it can know, or quietly exceeds them.
Overview
Most of this system constrains what an interface looks like. This page constrains what it is allowed to say — which turns out to matter more, because a component rendered perfectly can still assert a diagnosis the device is not cleared to make.
Everything below assumes a trained reader who can tell when the screen is wrong. Where the reader is the patient — no training, no supervision, nobody to ask — that assumption fails, and precision starts reading as reassurance while correct hedging reads as evasion. That is a second register, not a simplified version of this one. See Lay & patient-facing design.
Every rule here already existed, scattered across Alert Banner, Dialog, Button, Status chip, Select and Confidence disclosure. This page is where they live now; those pages defer to it.
Specific
Name the finding, the territory and the measurement. Specificity is what makes a statement checkable, and checkable is what makes it trustworthy.
Bounded
Never claim more than the software can know. It detects patterns; the clinician diagnoses. No wording may blur that line.
Calm
Urgency is carried by priority level and colour. Words carry information. No capitals, no exclamation marks, no adjectives doing an alarm's job.
The claim ladder
The single most important table in this system. What AcuteLine may say about a finding, and what it may never say — regardless of how confident the model is.
| Permitted | Means | Prohibited | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| "…pattern detected" | The model matched a pattern in this signal | "diagnosed", "has a STEMI" | A diagnosis is a clinician's act, integrating history and examination the software never saw. |
| "consistent with…" | Compatible with, not established | "confirms", "indicates" | Compatibility is not confirmation. |
| "…cannot be excluded" | The finding remains possible | "probable", "likely" | Bare likelihood words invite reliance without a number. Give the number instead. |
| "no … detected" | The model did not match a pattern | "normal", "clear", "ruled out", "negative for" | Absence of detection is not absence of disease, and "normal" is a clinician's summary judgement of a whole patient. |
| "interpretation limited by…" | Input conditions constrain what can be said | Silence, or a lower confidence score | See Confidence disclosure — withhold rather than extrapolate. |
| "review", "confirm", "consider" | Directs attention | "administer", "give", "start", any dose or agent | Decision support does not prescribe. Refer to local protocol; never name therapy. |
AcuteLine's regulatory position is that it is decision support: it flags patterns for clinician review and never diagnoses or treats. That position is asserted in the technical file and it is enacted, or broken, in the microcopy. A single alert reading "AcuteLine has diagnosed a heart attack" contradicts the file more effectively than any architecture diagram supports it.
Governed strings
A small set of exact wordings that exist as risk controls. They are not shortened for space, not moved to a tooltip, not shown only on first use, and not freely translated — a translated version is reviewed for equivalent meaning and recorded alongside the source.
| String | Appears | Mitigates |
|---|---|---|
| "A negative result does not exclude ACS. Continue clinical assessment." | Every negative or no-finding result | False reassurance; premature discharge |
| "No confidence score is reported for this recording." | Any input outside validated scope | Confident output on an input the model cannot assess |
| "Your assessment is recorded against model vn and used for post-market performance monitoring." | The override control | Undisclosed use of clinician data; unconsidered agreement |
| "Emergency access active — this session is being audited." | Break-glass sessions, persistently | Forgetting an audited session is open |
| "Change from baseline cannot be assessed." | No prior study on file | Unknown chronicity read as acute, or vice versa |
Microcopy by component
| Where | Shape | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Alert title | Finding — territory. ≤ 60 characters, no full stop | STEMI pattern detected — anterior leads V2–V4 |
| Alert description | Measurement. One imperative referring to local protocol | ST elevation 3.1 mm. Confirm ECG and activate local chest-pain pathway. |
| Button | Verb + object. 2–4 words, sentence case, no full stop | Activate pathway · Discard draft report |
| Dialog title | A question naming the object | Discard this draft report? |
| Dialog body | What happens, to whom, and what is not affected | …will be permanently lost. The original ECG is unaffected. |
| Status chip | A state, 1–2 words, never an instruction | Awaiting serial |
| Select placeholder | "Select a …" | Select a reason |
| Field error | What is wrong, then what to do. No blame | MRN must be 9 digits — 7 entered. Check the wristband and re-enter. |
| Empty state | The state, plus evidence the system is alive | No cases awaiting review. Last analysis 14:47. Monitoring 4 sources. |
Never blame the reader
This system uses the term use error precisely because such errors usually arise from a mismatch between the interface, the task and the environment — not from a deficient user. Copy follows the same logic: it describes the state, never the person's failing. "You entered an invalid MRN" locates the fault in the clinician. "MRN must be 9 digits — 7 entered" locates it in the data and says what to do.
- No "you" in error text. Describe the field and the requirement.
- No "invalid", "illegal", "failed". State the rule that was not met.
- No apologies. "Sorry, something went wrong" says nothing and delays.
- Name the recovery. Every error ends with the next action.
Mechanics
- Sentence case everywhere. Title Case slows scanning and does not survive translation. Capitals only for proper nouns and standard abbreviations — STEMI, ECG, MRN.
- No full stops on buttons, chips, labels or single-clause titles. Full stops in body text as normal.
- Active voice, present tense. "Serial comparison unavailable", not "could not be performed".
- No negation stacks. "Not non-diagnostic" is unreadable at 3 a.m. One negation per sentence, at most.
- Numerals for all quantities, with units bound to them — see Typography.
- No exclamation marks, ever. Not in alarms, not in confirmations.
- Never lead with the product name. "STEMI pattern detected", not "AcuteLine has detected…". The clinician cares about the patient.
Tone under pressure
Tone is not decoration here. A clinician's emotional response to the interface is part of satisfaction, and wording that raises stress in a resuscitation has a measurable cost.
- Neutral, not alarming, at every priority. The banner is already red. Words that also shout are redundant and raise arousal without adding information.
- Confident about what is known, explicit about what is not. Hedging everything is as unhelpful as hedging nothing.
- Never congratulatory. "Great job!" on completing a cath lab notification is grotesque in context.
- Never anthropomorphise the model. "AcuteLine thinks", "I found" — the software is a tool, and language that gives it agency encourages reliance on it as a colleague.
Bounded claim, specific measurement, one action, no adjectives. The urgency is in the colour, not the words.
Claims a diagnosis, leads with the product, shouts, apologises, blames, and prescribes therapy the device is not cleared to recommend.
Translation
- Budget 35 % expansion. German and Finnish are the practical worst cases; test both before release. Status chips break first.
- No idiom, metaphor or cultural reference. "Flag for review" is already a metaphor — prefer "mark for review".
- Never concatenate sentence fragments. Word order differs between languages; pass whole strings with named placeholders.
- Governed strings are reviewed, not just translated, by someone competent in both the language and the clinical meaning.
- No text baked into images. Untranslatable, unresizable, unreadable by assistive technology.
- Logical properties for layout, so right-to-left works by construction — see Typography.
Outcomes of use
What this contributes to, in the terms of Usability & context of use.
- Effectiveness — the clinician's understanding of a finding matches what the software actually established. The claim ladder is the whole of this.
- Efficiency — a title read once. Every ambiguous word costs a re-read, and re-reads happen when there is least time for them.
- Satisfaction — calibrated trust and lower stress. Copy that shouts, blames or over-claims erodes confidence in the tool faster than any visual defect.
Do's and don'ts
Bounded claim plus the governed caveat. The software says what it did, not what is true of the patient.
“Normal” is a clinician's summary judgement of a whole patient, asserted here by a pattern matcher on one recording.
States the rule, the actual, and the recovery. Nobody is blamed and the next step is obvious.
Locates the fault in the clinician, names no rule, and offers no way forward.
Clinical safety notes
Trace these in your risk file (ISO 14971) and usability engineering file (IEC 62366-1). Copy is a design control; changing a governed string is a design change.
- Claim ladder enforced. Mitigates: a decision-support output being read as a diagnosis, and a regulatory position contradicted in the interface.
- No therapy named. Mitigates: the device operating outside its intended purpose.
- Governed strings unaltered and reviewed in translation. Mitigates: false reassurance from a shortened or drifted caveat.
- "No … detected", never "normal" or "clear". Mitigates: absence of detection read as absence of disease.
- Errors describe the state, not the person. Mitigates: blame language discouraging reporting, and obscuring the interface's role in the error.
- No exclamation marks or urgency adjectives. Mitigates: raised arousal without added information; competition with the alarm palette.
- No anthropomorphism. Mitigates: automation bias from language that gives the model agency.
- 35 % expansion budget, whole strings. Mitigates: truncated clinical copy in a translated build.
Related
- Usability & context of use — why "use error".
- Typography — numerals, units and identifiers.
- Alert Banner · Dialog · Status chip — this page applied.
- Confidence disclosure — the negative-result caveat.