Copywriting style guide for Grubhub Diner League

1.
Diner League Copy Style Guide
A Grubhub resource for everyone

2.
Who should use this guide?
Whether you’re working on menu design for the Grubhub.com website (also known as “Umami”) or
testing a new shopping cart concept within the Seamless mobile app (which is also called
“Espresso”), your role is likely to require writing copy from time to time. If that’s true for you, read
on—this guide’s designed to help you do your job while offering you the following benefits:
1. You’ll get answers to your copy questions as you learn from real-life examples.
2. You’ll learn to write copy of a consistent quality across products and brands.
3. You’ll communicate better with colleagues by adopting a shared content vocabulary.

3. Most writing uses sentence case
The “granddaddy” of Grubhub copy conventions is: ​Almost always, write in sentence case.
Writing in “sentence case” means capitalizing only the first letter of every sentence, as well as the
first letter of every proper noun—for example, a name, a U.S. city, or a company like AllMenus.
When writing for Grubhub, sentence case is your best bet in nearly all cases.
Use sentence case on And your copy may look something like this
Section headers &
headlines
Order what you love in a New York
minute
Subheaders & secondary
headlines
Seamless partners with your favorite NYC restaurants
Text-based links Add a payment method​ ​(This is an illustrative link...it points nowhere.)
Calls to action (CTAs)
Short-form & long-form
body copy
Our mobile app puts thousands of restaurants in your hands so
you can order your favorites fast. Search local restaurants by
dish or cuisine, sort them by rating, distance, and price, or
explore menu options.
When should we use title case?
Writing in title case requires us “to capitalize each sentence as if it were a book, album, movie, or
other proper noun” At Grubhub, title case is very seldom used. When we DO use it, we must
capitalize the first letter of every word in a sentence or phrase except for short connector words,
like “the,” “an,” “or,” “for,” etc. Here are the (fairly rare) instances when title case is used:
Use title case for As in these examples
Menu items ● Gemma’s Pesto Arrabiata
● “Life’s a Peach” Cobbler
● Jumbo Shamrock Shake
● Eggs Over My Hammy
● Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken

4. Geographical locations—cities,
countries, bodies of water, landmarks,
etc.
● New York, NY
● Chicago, IL
● Empire State Building
● Griffith Park
● Prospect Park
Names—people, companies, coalitions,
groups, titles of works, etc.
● Matt Maloney, CEO
● Maria Belousova, CTO
● GrubTank 2018 Finalists
● Cookbook, A Grubhub Pattern Library
● Diner League
● Content Chronicles
● “Hits the Spot” Recognition Program
Grubhub/Seamless products and
services—but only if referencing directly
● Grubhub Skill for Amazon Alexa
● The Crave
● TechBytes Blog
● Grubhub Culture Club
● Eat24 Preorder
● Grubhub App for iOS (or Seamless App for
Android, or Eat24 App for iOS...etc.)
Notable exceptions to the Grubhub/Seamless products and services rule:
Do not use title case if indirectly mentioning Grubhub/Seamless products. For example:
● In copy, when you’re referring to a feature or offering in a generic manner instead of directly
mentioning it (“the app,” “checkout,” “order history”):
○ Our app puts thousands of restaurants in your hands, keeps your payment info secure at
checkout, and saves your order history—so order what you love anytime.
● In CTAs that reference the feature or product generically (e.g. “the skill” or “Grubhub skill”):
○ Download the Grubhub skill​ ​(This is a non-working link.)
● In a header/subheader pair where the focus isn’t the feature/product itself, but rather, a
benefit connected to it (as shown in this holiday copy for Preorder):
○ Seamless delivers on Christmas Day, guaranteed
To enjoy this service, preorder no later than 4pm on Fri, Dec 23

5. Basic punctuation rules
● The full range of punctuation—periods, question marks, and exclamation marks, as well as
less-common marks, like quotation marks—is used only in body copy.
● Never use periods in headers, sub-headers, links, or calls to action (CTAs).
● Question marks are almost never used in headers, sub-headers, links, and calls to action
(CTAs). They’re only appropriate when asking a question—“​What are you hungry for?​”
● On rare occasions, we may use an exclamation mark to drum up enthusiasm for a
promotion or giveaway—e.g. “​Click here to win!​” But it’s better to convey delight,
enthusiasm, surprise, or suspense with careful word choice, not punctuation.
Commas, em-dashes, colons, & more
Commas are great in all types of copy. They separate clauses, indicate pauses, and emphasize
sentence-style lists. We use the serial, or “Oxford,” comma at Grubhub. Note the difference in our
example below—the first sentence has a serial/Oxford comma and the second doesn’t:
● Right (serial/Oxford comma):​ ​We’re open ‘till 2am on Thursdays​,​ Fridays​,​ and Saturdays.
● Wrong (no serial comma):​ ​Pay with your Visa​,​ Mastercard or Amex credit card.
The em-dash, which looks like this (—), often acts as an industrial-strength comma, doing the
heavy lifting of setting off clauses in more complex sentences. Em-dashes are especially useful for
adding an extra thought or an aside to a sentence, as you can see in these examples:
● Aside:​ ​Thai rolled ice cream, the hottest of food trends, has delighted New Yorkers—and
dessert lovers across the nation—since its U.S. debut last year.
● Extra thought:​ ​We deliver seven days a week, all year long—yes, even on Thanksgiving.
Try these ​Mac keyboard shortcuts​ to get em-dashes into your documents faster.
What about colons and semicolons? Keep in mind they’re not on-brand at Grubhub—so don’t use
them, and don’t worry about how they should be used.

6. Time in copy
At Grubhub, we default to 12-hour numerical times with denoted am/pm — but we’re on the road
to offering 24-hour numerical display options for users who prefer this.
Write numerical times
● Using cardinal Roman numerals
● In the H:MM or HH:MM format (3 to 4 digits in length)
● With a lowercase, non-punctuated ​am​ or ​pm​ right after the numbers
● As in these examples: 11:14am, 12:00pm, 7:49pm, 9:30pm
Comparison of display: 12-hour format vs. 24-hour format
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) offers us guidance for 24-hour time
formatting, suggesting we use HH:MM, with no am/pm designation, as our secondary standard.
Times in 12-hour format Times in 24-hour format
9:45am 09:45
12:00pm 12:00
2:15pm 14:15
7:22pm 19:22
11:57pm 23:57
12:00am 00:00
Time intervals as ranges
Sometimes our users need times or intervals displayed in range format—think about how we show
our users the daily checkout and pickup windows for each restaurant in our system, or take care to
estimate ranges during which a Rapid Pickup order will be ready or a Customer Care rep becomes
free to answer the user’s call.

7. For each time or interval range, use an en-dash (not a hyphen!) to join the two numbers. Here are a
few examples:
● Restaurant delivery & pickup hours:​ Monday’s hours are 9:30am–11:00pm. Catering
delivery offered 7 days a week, from 11:45am–10:30pm.
● Closings & service restorations:​ Because of Superstorm Thomas, Customer Care is not
available from 9:00am–7:30pm today. We’ll be on chat starting at ​11:30am tomorrow, and
on Aug. 22, will return to our regular hours of 8:30am–10:45pm.
● Order confirmation SMS & Emails:​ Grubhub here. Your delivery’s on its way. It should
arrive in 30–40 minutes. (This example uses relative times rather than precise times, but the
same formatting rules apply.)
When time intervals are abstract
Abstract intervals for diners are as simple as writing “lunch,” “evening,” or “late night.” But everyone
must understand these intervals to consist of a very specific block of hours—and this clarity will no
doubt be noticed and appreciated by our diners.
Interval name Real-time range
Breakfast 4:00am–10:00am
Lunch 10:00am–4:00pm
Brunch (Sat–Sun) 10:00am–4:00pm
Dinner 4:00pm–10:00pm
Late night 10:00pm–4:00am
Anytime Any time of day or night
ASAP (orders only)
Pickup or delivery occurs
within 2 hours of ordering

8. Dates in copy
Combine the most practical date conventions with a human touch
We display dates in a handful of different styles across our websites and mobile apps. Our goals,
when creating user-friendly standards for date copy, are as follows:
1. Establish just a few well-defined date formats for Grubhub/Seamless, ensuring our choices
are flexible to a wide array of user needs and circumstances.
2. Identify occasions when standard formats don’t cover date or interface requirements, and
fashion simple, legible solutions for these exceptions.
Basic date standards
Days are 1 or 2 digits. Years are 4 digits. All 7 days of the week, and 11 of the 12 months, are
denoted by their first 3 letters. Dates never contain periods—so we should not write “Jun. 27” or
“Sat. Dec. 1.” If we come across live copy using numerals to denote months, we should replace
each numeric month with its three-letter counterpart everywhere we can—for example, changing
“11/25” to “Nov 25” or updating “7/6” to “Jul 6”.
We maintain four sizes of basic dates. At each size increase, more specific info about the date is
displayed. These sizes/formats are as follows:
● Small date format:​ Month, DD—Jun 27 or Oct 5
● Medium date format:​ DayofWeek, Month DD—Tue, Jun 27 or Thu, Oct 5
● Large date format:​ Month DD, YYYY—Jun 27, 2017 or Oct 5, 2017
● Full date format:​ DayofWeek, Month DD, YYYY—Tue, Jun 27, 2017 or Thu, Oct 5, 2017
Exceptions to date standards
Sometimes, we must use date formats that are not aligned with our four-size basic set. Here are
the most common exceptions we’ll see:
● Displaying relative dates for very recent orders — For example: ASAP, Today, Tomorrow,
Yesterday. When combined with a concrete time, always format like so — “The restaurant
is closed. Next pickup at ​11:30am tomorrow​.”

9. ● Showing relative dates and times which become less specific as time goes by, such as
submission dates for user Ratings & Reviews — 15 mins ago → Yesterday → Tue → Jul
14 → 2018
● General guidelines​—Use a day of the week, like “Tue” when the review is 48 hours old.
Use a Small-sized date like “Jul 14” once the review’s one week old. Use a year like “2018”
once the review is more than a year old.
● Displaying when a user’s payment method expires — As is typical for credit/debit card
numbers, we always use the industry standard MM/YY expiration date format.
Looking ahead: the future of relative times and dates
When we move from concrete times and dates—like 12:44am or Tue, Jun 2—to relative ones, the
boundaries blur, and the time-date intervals grow both larger and more vague. The following is a
rough guide to some options for showing relative times and dates as they move into the past.
**​This is NOT a working standard yet, so it should NOT be used in product copy.**
● Relative dates:​ Today → Yesterday → Tue → Jul 14 → 2017 → 3 years ago
● Relative times:​ 9:30pm → 15 mins ago → 6 hours ago → 1 week ago → 2 months ago
→ 4 years ago.
Four rules of error states (also applies to success messages)
Rule 1—Human language, please
Every time you write an error message, your text should read as if it was written by a person. Avoid
industry jargon and technical terms. Instead, explain the error—and steps required to resolve it, if
applicable—in clear, simple, English. This approach helps build trust for our brand and ensures
users do not give up on Grubhub/Seamless and walk away just because they encountered
technical difficulties.
● Scenario:​ The user is adding a new credit card to his or her account but has forgotten the
CCV.
Suggested error message:​ Please enter your 3-digit security code.
Rule 2—Help them out
If your error message isn’t helpful it increases user frustration and annoyance. This in turn can
cause people to link our brand with “having a tough time.” For each error state, be clear and
specific about what went wrong and what, if anything, the user can do next to recover or move on

10. from the error. Once copy is drafted, work closely with your designer to ensure each error
message is easy to understand and navigate.
● Scenario:​ The user is trying to redeem a coupon that isn’t accepted in his or her location.
● Suggested error message:​ This promo code can't be redeemed in your area. Do you
want to check out without it?
Rule 3—Harmony over humor
Many people have opined on the “right” way to craft error messages. Some recommend serving
up error states with a hearty helping of humor. While this approach is a fine choice sometimes, it’s
not quite right for us. We would rather craft Grubhub error state copy with an upbeat tone that
re-establishes harmony without telling jokes.
Why? Users react to jokes, puns, and satire in a variety of ways—and some won’t be thrilled to see
a frustrating technical issue addressed in a manner they perceive as flippant. We suggest erring on
the safe side. Write your error message to be friendly, not funny. And whenever possible, reassure
users that Grubhub cares.
● Scenario:​ During checkout, the user attempts to pay using a gift card that no longer exists
or is no longer recognized Grubhub system.
● Suggested error message:​ “​We don't recognize this gift card. Check out with a different
payment type, or if something’s off, contact Customer Care.”
Rule 4—Humble but honest wins
Even if you’re writing for a worst-case scenario type of screw-up, keep it light, positive, and moving
forward. Blaming users for errors or technical mistakes is a no-no. Even if certain errors are, in fact,
their fault, NEVER tell them, “Hey, you messed up.” Reassure them instead, either by saying a
solution is in the works, or by offering an error recovery tip.
Apologies are sweet, but go stale if used too often. Reserve “I’m sorry’s” for major incidents, like
managing widespread order cancellations during a blizzard, or letting a user know we lost his/her
original order. Generally, if we make a promise to a user, and then break that promise, we
apologize. If we’re constantly “sorry,” our apology loses value when it matters most.
● Scenario:​ The user is trying to confirm a cart at a restaurant that’s ended its daily delivery
hours but is still taking pickup orders.
Suggested error message:​ “This restaurant’s not accepting delivery orders right now.
To check out, switch to pickup or choose a later delivery date.”

11. ● Scenario:​ A hurricane is about to hit, so the restaurant is closing and has sent staff home.
The user’s order is already more than an hour late, and now, we must tell this person that
the delivery is cancelled.
Suggested error message (in email):​ “Dangerous weather’s on the way, and we can’t
safely complete your delivery order from Szechuan House. We’re very sorry for the
inconvenience. Your payment will be refunded in full, which usually takes no more than 3
to 5 business days, and you’ll also receive an email offer for $6 off your next order.”
● Scenario:​ The user can’t submit an order because the home wireless is down—or s/he
wanted a pickup order, but forgot to switch and submitted a delivery order.
Suggested error message:​ “​For help with your order, call our Customer Care team.”
Tone & voice tips
● Stick to a friendly, helpful, and casual tone​ that prioritizes diners and their
wishes/needs. To get in the right headspace, imagine you’re the cool friend who loves food
and social events, has an inside scoop on the best local eats, and loves to share your
know-how.
● Because ordering food should be a pleasant experience, we must show a positive attitude
across all copy. This is true even when we’re helping a diner deal with the sort of rare but
mega-annoying issues that pop up in online ordering, like the payment method that
suddenly stops working in checkout. Rewrite a sentence like “​You tried to pay with an
expired credit card, so you can’t check out​” so it feels more positive—“​We couldn’t
submit your order. Please check your credit card info and try again.​”
● In general, aim to write for a 7th-grade reading level. “​We couldn’t submit your order.
Please check your credit card info and try again​“ is just right for a 7th grader. We
know that sometimes, the simplest things can be the hardest, so try using ​this tool​ to get a
better feel for the grade-level readability of your copy.
● Write in the active voice​. It’s fresher and more energetic. Instead of writing “​The menu
items can be added to the cart by clicking on them​” try “​Click each menu item to
add it to your cart​”. And instead of writing, “​All orders must be submitted no later
than 2pm today​” write “​Submit your order by 2pm today​”.

12. Style tips to keep copy fresh
● Use simpler, more common words instead of long words with many syllables. Users skim
and scan digital text. Your job is to make this easy for them. Also, while $10 words are just
fine in academic contexts, they fail miserably when used in the persuasion business.
● If you can use a ​contraction​ (and doing so makes sense), please do! Words like you’re, it’s,
you’ve, that’s—and similar—are great ways to add variety.
● Forget what your high-school English teacher said. At Grubhub, it’s totally cool to end a
sentence with a ​preposition​, and we encourage you to do it at least occasionally to keep
your copy interesting and upbeat.
● Ban jargon and buzzwords—for example, a sentence crammed with “corporate speak” like
“​Touch base with Customer Care to assist with all your Grubhub e-commerce
needs​” becomes the friendly, highly readable “​Contact Customer Care if you have a
question about your order or need help.​”
Tricky words that can be nouns or verbs
Pickup vs pick up
● Pickup is a compound noun—“​Do you want delivery or pickup?​”
● Pick up is a two-word verb—“​You can pick up your order now.​”
Checkout vs. check out
● Checkout is a compound noun—“​Submit your order at checkout.​”
● Check out is a two-word verb—“​Ready to check out?​”
Login vs. log in
● Login is a compound noun—“​Reset your password on the login page.​”
● Log in is a two-word verb—“​Please log in to update your contact info.​”
Setup vs. set up
● Setup is a compound noun—“​We offer catering setup upon request.​”
● Set up is a two-word verb—“​Order with a few taps—no set up required.​”

13. More tricky words & how to use them
We get questions most often about these words—now, we’ve included the correct spelling and
syntax of each, all in one handy place.
Use this Instead of these
Grubhub GrubHub, Grub hub, or Grub Hub
GrubCentral Grubcentral or Grub Central
Username User Name or username
My Account MyAccount or My account
ZIP Code**
(**Exception: Label payment method form
fields as “Postal code”—never ZIP Code.)
ZIP code, zip code, zipcode or any variant of
postal code**
email Email or e-mail
internet Internet
WiFi Wi-Fi, Wi-fi, wi-fi, or wifi
URL Url, url, or U.R.L.
drop-down dropdown or drop down
checkbox check-box or check box
double-click doubleclick or double click
FAQs FAQ or FAQ’s
homepage Home page, home page, Homepage
user(s), customer(s), people, folks diner(s), conversions, peeps, homies

14. Copywriting & editing resources
Want to check your writing before turning it in? Sweet! We’d like to point you to the best resources
available to you.
● First, check out our ​Content QA list​, available on the Grubhub Wiki.
● The other resource, ​Grammarly​, is a free browser extension for Google Chrome that
instantly checks your grammar and syntax as you write.
Of course, neither resource is a substitute for proofing your own work. Nor can these tools replace
the work of a copywriter or content strategist. Treat them as valuable add-ons to your writing
technique and arsenal of knowledge—because that’s exactly what they are.
Happy writing, Diner League!
Enjoy the journey.