Writing words for screens: say less, say it bigger

Give each screen one message, use as few words as it takes and make those words big. People look at a venue screen for a moment, so put what they care about first (the price, or the time it starts) and cut everything else. Detail can live on the menu, the website or with the staff, where people have time for it.

Write for a glance

Nobody reads a screen the way they read a letter. They look up from the queue or across from the bar, take in a few words and look away. If the point isn't in those few words, they've missed it.

So work out the one thing you want someone to know, and say that. "2 for 1 cocktails, 5 till 7" works on a screen. "Join us every weekday between 5pm and 7pm for our fantastic two for one offer on selected cocktails" is a paragraph, and the only people who'll read it to the end are your bar staff.

Lead with the thing people want

People scan for the product, the price or the time, so put that first and in the biggest type. A few before and after examples of the kind we see in pubs and cafes:

• "We're delighted to announce that our quiz night is back every Tuesday at 8pm" becomes "Quiz night, Tuesdays 8pm"
• "Why not treat yourself to one of our delicious homemade cakes?" becomes "Homemade cake and a coffee, £5"
• "Please be advised that the sauna will be closed for maintenance until further notice" becomes "Sauna closed for repairs"
• "Don't miss the big match this Saturday, kick-off 3pm, showing on all our screens" becomes "Derby day: Sat 3pm, every screen"

Cut the words that do nothing

Most screen copy can lose half its words before anyone notices. The usual ones to go:

• Openers like "Why not", "Don't forget" and "We're pleased to announce".
• Adjectives everyone uses, like delicious and amazing. They take up room and nobody believes them. Say what makes it good instead, such as "slow-cooked" or "from the farm down the road", as long as it's true.
• Your own name, on a screen inside your own venue.
• Full stops at the end of headlines.

Being specific usually makes the words shorter as well as better. "Great food all day" tells people nothing they can use. "Breakfast till 11:30" tells them whether they're in time.

Times, dates and prices

Write times and dates the way people say them, and the same way on every screen. "Sat 31 Oct, 3pm" is quicker to read than "31/10/2026 15:00", and picking one style stops 3pm on one slide and 15:00 on the next. With prices, use the pound sign and drop the pence on round numbers, because £12 reads faster than £12.00.

If prices change often, don't type them into a layout at all. Casty menu boards keep products and prices as data, so a price change is one edit and every screen showing that product updates. Datasets do the same for fixtures and timetables, which showing live data on screens explains. The words in the layout then only change when you want a new design.

Capitals, punctuation and tone

Sentence case, with a capital at the start and lower case after, is easier to read than a whole line in capitals, because the shapes of lower-case words help people recognise them at a glance. Save capitals for a single word like OPEN or FULL. Exclamation marks don't make an offer more exciting either, and a screen full of them reads like shouting.

Write the way your staff talk to customers. If the bar staff would say "pie and a pint, twelve quid", the screen can say "Pie and a pint £12". It sounds like your place, and it's shorter than anything a marketing brochure would come up with.

One thing to watch in the layout editor: text can auto-size to fit its box. That's handy, but it means a long sentence just shrinks until nobody can read it from the bar. If your text has shrunk, cut words before you touch the box.

Make it something people can do now

If a screen asks people to do something, make sure they can do it there and then. "Ask at the bar" and "Book at reception" are things people can act on straight away. A web address is hard to remember from a glance, so a QR code usually works better. It needs to be big enough to scan from where people stand, and on screen long enough for someone to get their phone out and open the camera. If it's on a rotating slide that's gone in eight seconds, most people won't manage it.

Read it from where customers stand

Put each slide on the real screen and read it from where customers stand, in the time they'd give it. If you haven't got the point before you'd naturally look away, cut more. Fewer words leaves room for bigger ones, and designing for screens covers size and contrast. How long each slide stays up matters as well, which how long each slide should stay on screen goes into.