Rewrite UI copy impersonally, and name things by what they are - #83
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"replace 'Every edit you have made...' (avoid 'you' pointed language - that is not
professional)"; then "Clean up the 'you' language across the board".
Measured from the RENDERED pages rather than the source, since only text a reviewer
actually sees counts: 158 occurrences of you/your across seven pages, now 4 - and
those 4 are in the Copy-prompt text, which addresses an AI assistant, where second
person is correct.
Done as an explicit old->new table of 130 pairs, never a regex over prose.
"your" carries different weight in different sentences, and a blanket substitution
produces text that is grammatical and wrong. Comments are untouched: they address
a maintainer, and telling a maintainer "you" is right.
The reviewer's own example made the point better than the rule does - "Publish
your reviews" -> "Publish reviewed transcripts" - and it "adds clarity as well".
That is the pattern throughout: removing the second person forced each string to
name what it actually refers to.
Publish your reviews -> Publish reviewed transcripts
Back up your progress -> Back up review progress
Save & Share Your Reviews -> Save & Share Reviews
Your changes -> Processing output
Every edit you have made... -> Pending edits are reflected in color: Green
indicates addition, Red indicates removal.
Your verdict, done -> Verdict recorded
Set for you -> Set automatically
your area / you (row pills) -> owned area / assigned
Nothing of yours is... -> Nothing assigned is...
you are: {ME} -> identified as: {ME}
Two things this exposed. `Reviewer (you)` was a field LABEL whose parenthetical
existed only to explain the second person - it is just "Reviewer" now. And the
sub-line under the output panel had to change in two places, the server render and
setOutHead(), or the wording would revert the first time a step ran.
I broke the JS once doing this: "one's own work" inside a single-quoted JS string
terminated it at the apostrophe, and /backups then hung rather than 500ing, so the
page load timed out instead of erroring. Reworded to avoid the apostrophe rather
than escaping it, so a future change of quote style cannot reintroduce it.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VVNYqGza2dFdeWFX7qXnwb
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Measured from the rendered pages, not the source — only text a reviewer actually sees counts:
Those 4 are in the Copy-prompt text, which addresses an AI assistant — second person is correct there, as it is in the Part 2 assistant prompt.
How
An explicit old→new table of ~130 pairs, never a regex over prose. "your" carries different weight in different sentences, and a blanket substitution produces text that is grammatical and wrong. Comments are untouched: they address a maintainer, and telling a maintainer "you" is right.
The clarity win
Agreed, and it held throughout — removing the second person forced each string to name what it actually refers to:
Two things it exposed
Reviewer (you)was a field label whose parenthetical existed only to explain the second person — it's justReviewernow.The output panel's sub-line had to change in two places — the server render and
setOutHead()— or the wording would revert the first time a step ran.One self-inflicted break
"one's own work"inside a single-quoted JS string terminated it at the apostrophe./backupsthen hung rather than 500ing, so the page load timed out instead of erroring — a slower way to notice. Reworded to avoid the apostrophe rather than escaping it, so a future change of quote style can't reintroduce it.All six pages 200, contrast 84 pairs clean.
https://claude.ai/code/session_01VVNYqGza2dFdeWFX7qXnwb