Stop being so negative!

Now and then, while taking certain actions or choosing settings on a site or app, there’ll be a particular phrasing that, on the surface, seems perfectly innocent. But for end users, this wording can add an unnecessary layer of confusion on an otherwise basic interaction.

Here’s one such example. I get this whenever I move an email from the Junk Mail folder to the Inbox in Outlook.

Every single time I get this, it trips me up. Ultimately, I’m being asked if I want messages from this address to always land in my inbox—but I’m being asked in a really strange way. I’m supposed to agree with a negative prompt (with a checkbox that’s selected by default) if I want those messages to never land in my junk folder again. It’s literally offering a double negative, when it could easily have said “Always send these messages to my Inbox” instead. And then users would be agreeing with the affirmative suggestion, which is so much faster to map out in your brain.

Here’s another tiny example from Unity Hub:

Again, “Always ask me to confirm” with the box checked would be the exact same setting, just much easier to understand at a glance. But we could go a step further with this example:

The option to show or hide something isn’t as black and white as an Always/Never decision, but this wording is a little less affirmative than “Show the Hub” would have been. Again, just little ways we could change our phrasing to make sure users are responding to affirmative options instead of having to double up on negatives.

Luckily, negative setting prompts are pretty uncommon, but that also makes them jump out a lot more when I do encounter them. Here are a few from a couple Adobe apps, mixed in with many more positives, thankfully:

“Disable,” “Deactivate” and “Ignore” are all easy enough to understand on their own, but why not let users get what you’re asking as soon a possible, with less of a chance to make a mistake?

Of course, I haven’t done any label testing beyond my own experience to know if this is truly an issue with other users, and if you asked around, most people wouldn’t have noticed this as a problem—nor would they agree that it is one, even after reading everything I’ve just written. And fixing these little gripes won’t get you any thanks from your users, but it will iron out a few tiny wrinkles that could cause slight confusion at best, and result in selecting the wrong options at worst.

So wherever you can, be positive. It can’t hurt anyone, and it might just save some time and headaches.