“Your,” ​“My” and Personal Pronouns

You’re writing CTA button copy to encourage a user to create an account. Should you say ​“Create Your Account,” ​“Create My Account” or just plain old ​“Create Account”? Well…it depends.

Personal pronouns are okay in marketing headlines like ​“Meet Your New Cameraman.” And it follows that the CTA at the end of that piece of content might be ​“Reserve Your Camera.” Both of those are persuasive content that’s speaking directly to the customer in a con­ver­sa­tion­al way.

But once the customer fills out the form to reserve said camera, the CTA at the bottom of the form is now part of trans­ac­tion­al content. It should be succinct, and as clear as possible about the action the user is taking. ​“Reserve Camera” is appropriate for that button.

If you’re not sure what’s appropriate, leave off the pronoun.

Product microcopy avoids personal pronouns because it’s largely trans­ac­tion­al content. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly important in our navigation — it’s never ​“Your Account” or ​“My Account,” it’s just ​“Account.”

Read John Saito’s excellent post for a summary of the issue.