Best practices for application alerts

Question

As a developer, I'm always confused about the three basic values of any application's alert:

1. Title
2. Message
3. Dismiss button

What should be placed in those 3 values? FAQ for myself:

• Should the title be a resume of what happened or where the message came from?
• Should messages use exclamations?
• Should messages be complete sentences (ending with a full stop)?
• How much detail should the message contain?

Well, as a single question: there is some basic rules while writing alert/notification messages? Bonus if these basic rules answer my minor questions.

Please share your thoughts...

Answer 1

All of this is documented by Google in their writing guidelines.

https://material.io/design/communication/writing.html#principles

Use contractions, avoid exclamation marks, be brief, keep it simple, use numerals in place of words, avoid slang, use punctuation when writing more than one sentence, use easy to understand language.

Answer 2

I'd say avoid using error codes like "Cannot do this stuff properly error : 321 " I don't think users really care about the error code as much as the developers do, For the expert users you can put a little
"> Show details". Next thing would be to be precise and brief about the error . Also one glance at the title should tell what the error actually is . The dismiss button is an important part, don't make the user agree to the error by pressing OK instead give the user an option to go and fiddle around with the settings to see if that solves the error or a CANCEL or DISMISS button .