Error messages that report without helping
==========================================

Rule · bucket: judgment · severity: note · detector: none · since: v0.1.0
Section: UI writing
Group: Errors

Forbidden:
  "Oops, something went wrong! Your payment wasn't successful as an error occurred" → **OK**

Instead:
  "Payment failed. Update your payment details and try again" → **Update payment details**

An error message has three jobs: say **what happened**, say **why** where it helps, and give the **way forward**. Then:

- **Never blame the user.** Not "you entered an invalid card number" but "that card number doesn't look right".
- **Cut the apology.** "Please", "sorry", "oops", "unfortunately" add length and delay the useful part. A cheerful "Oops!" above a failed payment is worse than nothing.
- **No system voice.** No codes, stack traces or internal terminology in front of a user.
- **Make the heading and the button descriptive enough to work alone.** Someone who reads only "Payment failed" and the button label can recover without the paragraph.

See `P-01` for *where* the message goes and `F-37` for field-level validation text.