"Your" vs. "My" in user interfaces

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Importance vs “banality” of wording

  • Some dismiss this as bikeshedding, others argue that “banal” UI details (like pronouns on buttons) are exactly the sort of low‑glamour work that makes products usable—like car door handles.
  • Several note that people in different specialties find each other’s “obsessions” trivial, but they’re still crucial to quality.

Localization and language-specific quirks

  • Multiple examples show “my/your” breaking down in other languages:
    • French and Spanish vary between imperative, infinitive, and first‑person (“Je m’inscris”, “J’en profite”), often sounding childish or marketing‑y.
    • French and Dutch must choose between formal/informal second person, which makes “your X” politically loaded.
    • Turkish formality flips UI→user vs user→UI, making “Delete Your Files” vs “Delete My Files” ambiguous.
    • Japanese and government UIs with “My Number”, “my car parking” lead to absurd spoken phrases.
  • Overuse of “I”/“my” in official apps is widely perceived as infantilizing or fake-familiar.

Need for UX writers and copy consistency

  • Commenters describe huge usability gains when dedicated language/UX copy professionals own microcopy, error messages, and translatability.
  • Consistency rules are recommended: same noun/verb for the same concept; avoid gratuitous pronouns; write English with localization in mind; give translators context (mockups, parameters).

Competing rules for “my” vs “your” vs none

  • Cited guideline:
    • Use “your” when the system speaks to the user.
    • Use “my” when the user instructs the system (button text, commands).
  • Many push back and prefer dropping pronouns entirely: “Documents”, “Account”, “Cases” instead of “My/Your …”, only adding ownership when there are multiple scopes (e.g., “Your Documents” vs “All Documents”).
  • Several argue that Windows’ historic “My Documents”/“My Computer” was confusing, patronizing, and bad for sorting; others defend it as an early multi‑user affordance to signal “this is your stuff”.

Tone, anthropomorphism, and user respect

  • Strong dislike for “buddy” tones: “Let’s add your account”, “Got it!”, “You’re 90% there”, cutesy opt‑outs (“No thanks, I love missing out on amazing deals”).
  • Some want machines to sound strictly factual and impersonal, not like friends; same sentiment extended to LLMs.
  • Vague messages like “Something went wrong” are criticized as unhelpful; users want clear action or diagnostic info.

Broader i18n and grammar problems

  • Thread dives into pluralization rules (Slavic, Arabic, Polish), grammatical cases, gendered weekdays, and word order; all show that naive English‑centric patterns (thingCount == 1 ? 'thing' : 'things') fail badly.
  • Libraries and formats (ICU, Fluent) help but still require developers to design strings and keys with context, not just words, in mind.