My / Your confusion

by Matthew Stibbe on May 3, 2007

I became interested in Zopa, the MySpace of online lending, after I wrote about them for Director.

They have a nice informal tone of voice and use the ‘us / you’, ‘your / our’ convention which makes things friendlier and easier to follow. However, it spotted one place where it got them into trouble:

Screen grab showing 'my this' and 'my that' but 'your personal details'

It’s my lending, my borrowing but your personal details. I suppose this reinforces the point that you have to write harder if you want to write informal.

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    { 9 comments… read them below or add one }

    Martin May 3, 2007 at 10:39 am

    As a web developer I’ve always wondered how you should refer to the user. You see the use of My a lot MySpace or My Profile for example. But My usually implies ownership by the person saying it. To me it means belonging to the computer system and not to the user.

    So shouldn’t MySpace really be called YourSpace?

    Reply

    zopa_tom May 3, 2007 at 10:54 am

    My fault!

    Good spot – will be changed quick-sharpish.

    Reply

    Matthew Stibbe May 3, 2007 at 10:59 am

    Wow! Within an hour or so, they’ve changed it. I had no idea that anyone from Zopa would actually read this. It was more a comment on consistency. Still, sometimes my grasp exceeds my reach :)

    I agree about the MySpace / YourSpace point. But the main thing is to be consistent whichever way you go.

    Reply

    zopa_tom May 3, 2007 at 4:57 pm

    I certainly agree Matthew. It’s one of those classic wood for the trees things – I must have stared at that screen at least a thousand times and never once stopped to think about it.

    I’ll have to raise my game now I know you’re checking…!

    Reply

    Robert May 3, 2007 at 7:10 pm

    “….I’ll have to raise my game now I know you’re checking…!”

    I’ll be checking too. I’m a My Lender!

    Reply

    zopa_tom May 4, 2007 at 9:52 am

    Excellent – that’ll keep me on my toes.

    Actually, and rather pertinently, I’m about to test out having a hopper where members (and Zopa Team Members) can post any typos/syntax errors/inconsistencies they see on site, and which I promise to sort out within 48 hours.

    As a self-confessed pedant myself, I’d love to be able to do that when I spot things on other sites – so am keen to give it a blast at Zopa!

    What do you reckon? Anyone seen other sites try something similar?

    Reply

    Nick May 4, 2007 at 11:08 am

    Great response there from zopa tom – but I have a question. Should I be signing in to Zopa with your name and your password or my name and my password ;-)

    Reply

    zopa_tom May 4, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    It’s a minefield!

    I’m slightly relieved/disappointed nobody’s spotted a missing apostrophe that has been nagging at me for months, and which is being fixed in a matter of hours….

    Reply

    Matthew Stibbe May 4, 2007 at 3:40 pm

    We noticed. We were just being polite :)

    Reply

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