Recently I was working on the message that a server should display if it timed out. Our first text began "Your request has been terminated..." This is a technically correct description of what has just happened, but fails the test that messages should be about the customer and not about the system. I could imagine a customer feeling that not only had we failed to process their request, but now we were planning to send a Terminator after them. (Well that should reduce the number of customer complaints ;-) ). We changed it to a message beginning "We are sorry, your request has timed out..." and going on to explain what to do (try again in a while, it is probably due to high usage just now, the administrator has been automatically notified of the problem). That's much better because it is about the customer's needs and what they should do next.
