Diner League Copy Style Guide A Grubhub resource for everyone
Table of contents Who should use this guide? Most writing uses sentence case When should we use title case? Basic punctuation rules Commas, em-dashes, colons, & more Time in copy Time intervals as ranges When time intervals are abstract Dates in copy Basic date standards Four rules of error states (also applies to success messages) Tone & voice tips Style tips to keep copy fresh Tricky words that can be nouns or verbs More tricky words & how to use them Copywriting & editing resources
Who should use this guide? Whether you’re working on menu design for the Grubhub.com website (also known as “Umami”) or testing a new shopping cart concept within the Seamless mobile app (which is also called “Espresso”), your role is likely to require writing copy from time to time. If that’s true for you, read on—this guide’s designed to help you do your job while offering you the following benefits: 1. You’ll get answers to your copy questions as you learn from real-life examples. 2. You’ll learn to write copy of a consistent quality across products and brands. 3. You’ll communicate better with colleagues by adopting a shared content vocabulary.
Most writing uses sentence case The “granddaddy” of Grubhub copy conventions is: Almost always, write in sentence case. Writing in “sentence case” means capitalizing only the first letter of every sentence, as well as the first letter of every proper noun—for example, a name, a U.S. city, or a company like AllMenus. When writing for Grubhub, sentence case is your best bet in nearly all cases.
Use sentence case on
And your copy may look something like this
Section headers & headlines
Order what you love in a New York minute
Subheaders & secondary headlines
Seamless partners with your favorite NYC restaurants
Text-based links
Add a payment method (This is an illustrative link...it points nowhere.)
Calls to action (CTAs) Short-form & long-form body copy
Our mobile app puts thousands of restaurants in your hands so you can order your favorites fast. Search local restaurants by dish or cuisine, sort them by rating, distance, and price, or explore menu options.
When should we use title case? Writing in title case requires us “to capitalize each sentence as if it were a book, album, movie, or other proper noun” At Grubhub, title case is very seldom used. When we DO use it, we must capitalize the first letter of every word in a sentence or phrase except for short connector words, like “the,” “an,” “or,” “for,” etc. Here are the (fairly rare) instances when title case is used:
Use title case for Menu items
As in these examples ● ● ● ● ●
Gemma’s Pesto Arrabiata “Life’s a Peach” Cobbler Jumbo Shamrock Shake Eggs Over My Hammy Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken
Geographical locations—cities, countries, bodies of water, landmarks, etc.
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New York, NY Chicago, IL Empire State Building Griffith Park Prospect Park
Names—people, companies, coalitions, groups, titles of works, etc.
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Matt Maloney, CEO Maria Belousova, CTO GrubTank 2018 Finalists Cookbook, A Grubhub Pattern Library Diner League Content Chronicles “Hits the Spot” Recognition Program
● ● ● ● ● ●
Grubhub Skill for Amazon Alexa The Crave TechBytes Blog Grubhub Culture Club Eat24 Preorder Grubhub App for iOS (or Seamless App for Android, or Eat24 App for iOS...etc.)
Grubhub/Seamless products and services—but only if referencing directly
Notable exceptions to the Grubhub/Seamless products and services rule: Do not use title case if indirectly mentioning Grubhub/Seamless products. For example: ● In copy, when you’re referring to a feature or offering in a generic manner instead of directly mentioning it (“the app,” “checkout,” “order history”): ○
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Our app puts thousands of restaurants in your hands, keeps your payment info secure at checkout, and saves your order history—so order what you love anytime.
In CTAs that reference the feature or product generically (e.g. “the skill” or “Grubhub skill”): ○ Download the Grubhub skill ( This is a non-working link.) In a header/subheader pair where the focus isn’t the feature/product itself, but rather, a benefit connected to it (as shown in this holiday copy for Preorder): ○
Seamless delivers on Christmas Day, guaranteed To enjoy this service, preorder no later than 4pm on Fri, Dec 23
Basic punctuation rules ●
The full range of punctuation—periods, question marks, and exclamation marks, as well as less-common marks, like quotation marks—is used only in body copy.
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Never use periods in headers, sub-headers, links, or calls to action (CTAs).
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Question marks are almost never used in headers, sub-headers, links, and calls to action (CTAs). They’re only appropriate when asking a question—“What are you hungry for?”
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On rare occasions, we may use an exclamation mark to drum up enthusiasm for a promotion or giveaway—e.g. “Click here to win!” But it’s better to convey delight, enthusiasm, surprise, or suspense with careful word choice, not punctuation.
Commas, em-dashes, colons, & more Commas are great in all types of copy. They separate clauses, indicate pauses, and emphasize sentence-style lists. We use the serial, or “Oxford,” comma at Grubhub. Note the difference in our example below—the first sentence has a serial/Oxford comma and the second doesn’t: ● Right (serial/Oxford comma): We’re open ‘till 2am on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. ●
Wrong (no serial comma): Pay with your Visa, Mastercard or Amex credit card.
The em-dash, which looks like this (—), often acts as an industrial-strength comma, doing the heavy lifting of setting off clauses in more complex sentences. Em-dashes are especially useful for adding an extra thought or an aside to a sentence, as you can see in these examples: ● Aside: Thai rolled ice cream, the hottest of food trends, has delighted New Yorkers—and dessert lovers across the nation—since its U.S. debut last year. ● Extra thought: W e deliver seven days a week, all year long—yes, even on Thanksgiving.
Try these Mac keyboard shortcuts to get em-dashes into your documents faster. What about colons and semicolons? Keep in mind they’re not on-brand at Grubhub—so don’t use them, and don’t worry about how they should be used.
Time in copy At Grubhub, we default to 12-hour numerical times with denoted am/pm — but we’re on the road to offering 24-hour numerical display options for users who prefer this. Write numerical times ● Using cardinal Roman numerals ● In the H:MM or HH:MM format (3 to 4 digits in length) ● With a lowercase, non-punctuated am or pm right after the numbers ● As in these examples: 11:14am, 12:00pm, 7:49pm, 9:30pm
Comparison of display: 12-hour format vs. 24-hour format The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) offers us guidance for 24-hour time formatting, suggesting we use HH:MM, with no am/pm designation, as our secondary standard.
Times in 12-hour format
Times in 24-hour format
9:45am
09:45
12:00pm
12:00
2:15pm
14:15
7:22pm
19:22
11:57pm
23:57
12:00am
00:00
Time intervals as ranges Sometimes our users need times or intervals displayed in range format—think about how we show our users the daily checkout and pickup windows for each restaurant in our system, or take care to estimate ranges during which a Rapid Pickup order will be ready or a Customer Care rep becomes free to answer the user’s call.
For each time or interval range, use an en-dash (not a hyphen!) to join the two numbers. Here are a few examples: ● ●
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Restaurant delivery & pickup hours: Monday’s hours are 9:30am–11:00pm. Catering delivery offered 7 days a week, from 11:45am–10:30pm. Closings & service restorations: Because of Superstorm Thomas, Customer Care is not available from 9:00am–7:30pm today. We’ll be on chat starting at 11:30am tomorrow, and on Aug. 22, will return to our regular hours of 8:30am–10:45pm. Order confirmation SMS & Emails: Grubhub here. Your delivery’s on its way. It should arrive in 30–40 minutes. (This example uses relative times rather than precise times, but the same formatting rules apply.)
When time intervals are abstract Abstract intervals for diners are as simple as writing “lunch,” “evening,” or “late night.” But everyone must understand these intervals to consist of a very specific block of hours—and this clarity will no doubt be noticed and appreciated by our diners.
Interval name
Real-time range
Breakfast
4:00am–10:00am
Lunch
10:00am–4:00pm
Brunch (Sat–Sun)
10:00am–4:00pm
Dinner
4:00pm–10:00pm
Late night
10:00pm–4:00am
Anytime
Any time of day or night
ASAP (orders only)
Pickup or delivery occurs within 2 hours of ordering
Dates in copy
Combine the most practical date conventions with a human touch We display dates in a handful of different styles across our websites and mobile apps. Our goals, when creating user-friendly standards for date copy, are as follows: 1. Establish just a few well-defined date formats for Grubhub/Seamless, ensuring our choices are flexible to a wide array of user needs and circumstances. 2. Identify occasions when standard formats don’t cover date or interface requirements, and fashion simple, legible solutions for these exceptions.
Basic date standards Days are 1 or 2 digits. Years are 4 digits. All 7 days of the week, and 11 of the 12 months, are denoted by their first 3 letters. Dates never contain periods—so we should not write “Jun. 27” or “Sat. Dec. 1.” If we come across live copy using numerals to denote months, we should replace each numeric month with its three-letter counterpart everywhere we can—for example, changing “11/25” to “Nov 25” or updating “7/6” to “Jul 6”. We maintain four sizes of basic dates. At each size increase, more specific info about the date is displayed. These sizes/formats are as follows: ● Small date format: Month, DD—Jun 27 or Oct 5 ● Medium date format: DayofWeek, Month DD—Tue, Jun 27 or Thu, Oct 5 ● Large date format: Month DD, YYYY—Jun 27, 2017 or Oct 5, 2017 ● Full date format: DayofWeek, Month DD, YYYY—Tue, Jun 27, 2017 or Thu, Oct 5, 2017
Exceptions to date standards Sometimes, we must use date formats that are not aligned with our four-size basic set. Here are the most common exceptions we’ll see: ● Displaying relative dates for very recent orders — For example: ASAP, Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday. When combined with a concrete time, always format like so — “The restaurant is closed. Next pickup at 11:30am tomorrow.”
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Showing relative dates and times which become less specific as time goes by, such as submission dates for user Ratings & Reviews — 15 mins ago → Yesterday → Tue → Jul 14 → 2018 General guidelines—Use a day of the week, like “Tue” when the review is 48 hours old. Use a Small-sized date like “Jul 14” once the review’s one week old. Use a year like “2018” once the review is more than a year old. Displaying when a user’s payment method expires — As is typical for credit/debit card numbers, we always use the industry standard MM/YY expiration date format.
Looking ahead: the future of relative times and dates When we move from concrete times and dates—like 12:44am or Tue, Jun 2—to relative ones, the boundaries blur, and the time-date intervals grow both larger and more vague. The following is a rough guide to some options for showing relative times and dates as they move into the past. **This is NOT a working standard yet, so it should NOT be used in product copy.** ● Relative dates: Today → Yesterday → Tue → Jul 14 → 2017 → 3 years ago ● Relative times: 9:30pm → 15 mins ago → 6 hours ago → 1 week ago → 2 months ago → 4 years ago.
Four rules of error states (also applies to success messages) Rule 1—Human language, please Every time you write an error message, your text should read as if it was written by a person. Avoid industry jargon and technical terms. Instead, explain the error—and steps required to resolve it, if applicable—in clear, simple, English. This approach helps build trust for our brand and ensures users do not give up on Grubhub/Seamless and walk away just because they encountered technical difficulties. ● Scenario: The user is adding a new credit card to his or her account but has forgotten the CCV. Suggested error message: Please enter your 3-digit security code.
Rule 2—Help them out If your error message isn’t helpful it increases user frustration and annoyance. This in turn can cause people to link our brand with “having a tough time.” For each error state, be clear and specific about what went wrong and what, if anything, the user can do next to recover or move on
from the error. Once copy is drafted, work closely with your designer to ensure each error message is easy to understand and navigate. ● Scenario: The user is trying to redeem a coupon that isn’t accepted in his or her location. ● Suggested error message: This promo code can't be redeemed in your area. Do you want to check out without it?
Rule 3—Harmony over humor Many people have opined on the “right” way to craft error messages. Some recommend serving up error states with a hearty helping of humor. While this approach is a fine choice sometimes, it’s not quite right for us. We would rather craft Grubhub error state copy with an upbeat tone that re-establishes harmony without telling jokes. Why? Users react to jokes, puns, and satire in a variety of ways—and some won’t be thrilled to see a frustrating technical issue addressed in a manner they perceive as flippant. We suggest erring on the safe side. Write your error message to be friendly, not funny. And whenever possible, reassure users that Grubhub cares. ● Scenario: During checkout, the user attempts to pay using a gift card that no longer exists or is no longer recognized Grubhub system. ● Suggested error message: “We don't recognize this gift card. Check out with a different payment type, or if something’s off, contact Customer Care.”
Rule 4—Humble but honest wins Even if you’re writing for a worst-case scenario type of screw-up, keep it light, positive, and moving forward. Blaming users for errors or technical mistakes is a no-no. Even if certain errors are, in fact, their fault, NEVER tell them, “Hey, you messed up.” Reassure them instead, either by saying a solution is in the works, or by offering an error recovery tip. Apologies are sweet, but go stale if used too often. Reserve “I’m sorry’s” for major incidents, like managing widespread order cancellations during a blizzard, or letting a user know we lost his/her original order. Generally, if we make a promise to a user, and then break that promise, we apologize. If we’re constantly “sorry,” our apology loses value when it matters most. ●
Scenario: The user is trying to confirm a cart at a restaurant that’s ended its daily delivery hours but is still taking pickup orders. Suggested error message: “This restaurant’s not accepting delivery orders right now. To check out, switch to pickup or choose a later delivery date.”
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Scenario: A hurricane is about to hit, so the restaurant is closing and has sent staff home. The user’s order is already more than an hour late, and now, we must tell this person that the delivery is cancelled. Suggested error message (in email): “Dangerous weather’s on the way, and we can’t safely complete your delivery order from Szechuan House. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience. Your payment will be refunded in full, which usually takes no more than 3 to 5 business days, and you’ll also receive an email offer for $6 off your next order.”
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Scenario: The user can’t submit an order because the home wireless is down—or s/he wanted a pickup order, but forgot to switch and submitted a delivery order. Suggested error message: “For help with your order, call our Customer Care team.”
Tone & voice tips
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Stick to a friendly, helpful, and casual tone that prioritizes diners and their wishes/needs. To get in the right headspace, imagine you’re the cool friend who loves food and social events, has an inside scoop on the best local eats, and loves to share your know-how.
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Because ordering food should be a pleasant experience, we must show a positive attitude across all copy. This is true even when we’re helping a diner deal with the sort of rare but mega-annoying issues that pop up in online ordering, like the payment method that suddenly stops working in checkout. Rewrite a sentence like “You tried to pay with an expired credit card, so you can’t check out” so it feels more positive—“We couldn’t submit your order. Please check your credit card info and try again.”
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In general, aim to write for a 7th-grade reading level. “We couldn’t submit your order. Please check your credit card info and try again“ is just right for a 7th grader. We know that sometimes, the simplest things can be the hardest, so try using this tool to get a better feel for the grade-level readability of your copy.
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Write in the active voice. It’s fresher and more energetic. Instead of writing “The menu items can be added to the cart by clicking on them” try “Click each menu item to add it to your cart”. And instead of writing, “All orders must be submitted no later than 2pm today” write “Submit your order by 2pm today”.
Style tips to keep copy fresh ●
Use simpler, more common words instead of long words with many syllables. Users skim and scan digital text. Your job is to make this easy for them. Also, while $10 words are just fine in academic contexts, they fail miserably when used in the persuasion business.
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If you can use a contraction (and doing so makes sense), please do! Words like you’re, it’s, you’ve, that’s—and similar—are great ways to add variety.
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Forget what your high-school English teacher said. At Grubhub, it’s totally cool to end a sentence with a preposition, and we encourage you to do it at least occasionally to keep your copy interesting and upbeat.
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Ban jargon and buzzwords—for example, a sentence crammed with “corporate speak” like “Touch base with Customer Care to assist with all your Grubhub e-commerce needs” becomes the friendly, highly readable “Contact Customer Care if you have a question about your order or need help.”
Tricky words that can be nouns or verbs Pickup vs pick up ● ●
Pickup is a compound noun—“Do you want delivery or pickup?” Pick up is a two-word verb—“You can pick up your order now.”
Checkout vs. check out ● ●
Checkout is a compound noun—“Submit your order at checkout.” Check out is a two-word verb—“Ready to check out?”
Login vs. log in ● ●
Login is a compound noun—“Reset your password on the login page.” Log in is a two-word verb—“Please log in to update your contact info.”
Setup vs. set up ● ●
Setup is a compound noun—“We offer catering setup upon request.” Set up is a two-word verb—“Order with a few taps—no set up required.”
More tricky words & how to use them We get questions most often about these words—now, we’ve included the correct spelling and syntax of each, all in one handy place.
Use this
Instead of these
Grubhub
GrubHub, Grub hub, or Grub Hub
GrubCentral
Grubcentral or Grub Central
Username
User Name or username
My Account
MyAccount or My account
ZIP Code** (**Exception: Label payment method form fields as “Postal code”—never ZIP Code.)
ZIP code, zip code, zipcode or any variant of postal code**
Email or e-mail
internet
Internet
WiFi
Wi-Fi, Wi-fi, wi-fi, or wifi
URL
Url, url, or U.R.L.
drop-down
dropdown or drop down
checkbox
check-box or check box
double-click
doubleclick or double click
FAQs
FAQ or FAQ’s
homepage
Home page, home page, Homepage
user(s), customer(s), people, folks
diner(s), conversions, peeps, homies
Copywriting & editing resources Want to check your writing before turning it in? Sweet! We’d like to point you to the best resources available to you. ●
First, check out our Content QA list, available on the Grubhub Wiki.
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The other resource, Grammarly, is a free browser extension for Google Chrome that instantly checks your grammar and syntax as you write.
Of course, neither resource is a substitute for proofing your own work. Nor can these tools replace the work of a copywriter or content strategist. Treat them as valuable add-ons to your writing technique and arsenal of knowledge—because that’s exactly what they are. Happy writing, Diner League! Enjoy the journey.