Writing

The interface talks like a capable colleague: plainly, briefly, in the second person, without fuss. Arabic copy is written, not machine-translated, in Modern Standard Arabic.

Principles

• Say what it is or does. "Save offer", not "Submit". "3 offers saved", not "Success!".
• Sentence case for everything: titles, buttons, tabs, labels.
• Short words, short sentences. Cut "please", "simply", "just", "successfully".
• Numbers as numerals ("3 offers"), money with its symbol ("£108,000"), dates unambiguous ("4 January 2027", not "04/01/27").
• No jargon the person didn't bring. "Take-home pay", not "net remuneration"; but "IR35" and "tax code" when they're the person's words. Nor the system's own: "tessellation", "lattice", "focal tile" belong in these docs, never on a page.
• Never invent facts. No made-up products, customers, figures, testimonials or team members, not even as placeholders: where a slot needs a name, write "Product name". Example data on the Elements page is plainly an example ("Item one", "Offer A").
• No hype. Not "revolutionary", "cutting-edge", "seamless", "next-gen"; no exclamation marks, no emoji.

Headings

• A plain claim. A heading says what's true, or what people get: "Code reads left to right, in either language", not "Code, reimagined".
• A lead-in, then the rest, quieter. For a section's heading, a short claim and then the sentence that bears it out, in the muted colour: <h2>How we build. <span class="al-muted">Small parts, one rule, repeated with care.</span></h2>. Both are the heading; screen readers read it whole.
• An eyebrow is a few words, in sentence case, that say which part of the page this is ("Who we are"), never a second headline.
• A closing line says what people will have: "Your next page, built from the same tile", not "Get started today".

Labels for actions

• Verb + object: "Save offer", "Archive 3 processes", "Delete account and data". Never "OK", "Yes", "Submit", "Confirm".
• Count what's affected in bulk actions: "Archive 3".
• An ellipsis (…) means the action asks something more before it acts: "Move to…", "Delete account…".
• The destructive button names what it destroys, in full, in its dialog: "Delete account and data".
• Cancel, Keep or Close for the way out, naming what's kept when it helps: "Keep my account".

Messages

Kind	Say	Example
Done	What happened, past tense; offer Undo if possible	"Process archived. Undo"
Pending	What's happening, with an ellipsis	"Saving…", "Working out again…"
Unsaved	That it isn't kept yet	"Unsaved changes"
Error	What went wrong, why if known, and what to do	"Couldn't save: you're offline. Retry"
Side effect	What else changes, before it does	"Changing the rate also updates 2 saved offers."
Empty	Why there's nothing, and the next action	"No offers yet. Work one out in the calculator…"
Destructive	What goes, how much, and that it's permanent	"This deletes your account and everything in it: 12 applications… It can't be undone."

Errors never blame ("You entered an invalid code") and never apologise emptily ("Oops!"). They say how to fix it: "A tax code is like 1257L, K475 or BR. Check your payslip."

Names

• The design system is Arabesque, with a capital A and nothing around it: not "the Arabesque design system", "Arabesque DS" or "the Arabesque Labs design system". Where a reader may not know it, the first mention says what it is ("Arabesque, the Arabesque Labs design system"); after that, "Arabesque". In Arabic: «آرابيسك» («آرابيسك، نظام تصميم معامل آرابيسك» the first time).
• The company is Arabesque Labs, in full: never "Arabesque" alone, which is the design system's name.
• An arabesque, lowercase, is the kind of pattern the brand draws on, not a name; prefer "the pattern" in these docs, so the two don't meet.

Arabic

• Modern Standard Arabic, in the same plain register, written as Arabic: what a person would write, not the English word for word.
• Arabic punctuation (، ؛ ؟) in Arabic sentences.
• Latin names, codes and amounts stay as they are, isolated (see ../rtl.md): "الرمز 0T", "Arabesque Labs".
• Imperatives for actions ("احفظ العرض", "أرشف 3"), past tense for what's done ("حُفظ").