UI labels - Invoca

No source exists for this page, and none has been offered. Unlike Voice and tone and Error messages, this is not a transcription. It is a synthesis of labeling rules that were authored independently, per component, on Button, FieldLabel, Checkbox, Radio, Switch, and Select — stated once here as shared principles instead of staying duplicated six times. Treat every constraint below as Proposed.

What counts as a UI label

Short, standalone text that names a control, an option, or a section — as distinct from a sentence a reader reads fluently (Voice and tone, Error messages) or a formatted value (Numbers, Dates and times). A button’s text, a field’s label, a checkbox’s option text, a tab’s name, and a table’s column header are all UI labels in this sense, even though they live on very different components.

The one decision every label makes: verb, or noun

Every component page written so far lands on one of exactly two grammatical shapes for a label, and which one applies follows directly from what the control does:

The control…	Label is a…	Example	Established on
Performs an action	Verb-first imperative phrase	”Save Changes,” “Delete Campaign”	TITAN-BTN-03
Represents a persistent thing, state, or setting	Noun phrase — never a question, never an instruction to act	”Email notifications,” “Dark mode,” “Routing”	Checkbox, Switch, Radio, Tabs

This table is a synthesis, citable in one place because six different component pages independently converged on this split — see Open issues for its sign-off status.

Rules that already apply everywhere

These were each established on a specific component page and restated here as the general form, cited back to where they were established rather than re-argued:

Rule	Established on
Prefer the specific word over a generic one (“Delete campaign,” not “OK”)	Button
Use the reader’s word for the thing, never the underlying library’s internal name	TITAN-DIV-10
No terminal punctuation on any label	TITAN-CASE-04
Casing follows the per-content-type model — it is not one global rule	Capitalization and punctuation
Plain language over jargon or internal acronyms	TITAN-VOICE-01/02

Constraints

ID	Constraint	Rationale
TITAN-UILABEL-01	A label naming an action is a verb-first imperative phrase.	Established directly on Button; restated here as the general form.
TITAN-UILABEL-02	A label naming a persistent thing, state, or setting is a noun phrase — never a question, never an instruction to act.	Synthesized from independently-arrived-at rules on Checkbox, Radio, Switch, and Tabs — see the table above.
TITAN-UILABEL-03	A label uses the reader’s word for the thing it names, never the underlying library’s or framework’s internal name.	TITAN-DIV-10 — “Table,” not `DataGrid`.
TITAN-UILABEL-04	The specific word is preferred over a generic placeholder (“OK,” “Submit,” “Item”) wherever the specific one is knowable at authoring time.	A generic label forces the reader to look elsewhere on the screen to learn what pressing it actually does.

Gaps in the current rules

UI labels: open issues

Divergences, open decisions, and undocumented gaps for UI labels.

Why it works this way

The verb/noun split mirrors what the reader needs to predict. A control that performs an action needs its label to answer “what happens if I press this” — a verb answers that directly. A control that represents a state needs its label to answer “what is this,” so the reader can recognize it — a noun answers that instead. Labeling an action with a noun (“Save” becomes “Confirmation”) or a state with a question (“Dark mode” becomes “Enable dark mode?”) answers the wrong question for what the reader is actually trying to do at that control.

​What counts as a UI label

​The one decision every label makes: verb, or noun

​Rules that already apply everywhere

​Constraints

​Gaps in the current rules

UI labels: open issues

​Why it works this way

What counts as a UI label

The one decision every label makes: verb, or noun

Rules that already apply everywhere

Constraints

Gaps in the current rules

Why it works this way