Error Message Guidelines

“Established wisdom holds that good error messages are polite, precise, and constructive. The Web brings a few new guidelines: Make error messages clearly visible, reduce the work required to fix the problem, and educate users along the way.”
Jacob Neilson believes good error messages should include:

  • Explicit indication that something has gone wrong
  • Human-readable language
  • Polite phrasing that doesn’t blame users or imply that they are either stupid or doing something wrong
  • Precise descriptions of exact problems
  • Constructive advice on how to fix the problem
  • Visible and highly noticeable, both in terms of the message itself and how it indicates which dialogue element users must repair
  • Preserve as much as the user’s work as possible.
  • Reduce the work of correcting the error
  • Hypertext links can be used to connect a concise error message to a page with additional background material or an explanation of the problem

Error Message Guidelines