# Marrenne Development Build Specification — Part 2: Copy System and String Glossary **Marrenne, Inc. Internal working document. Vendor-agnostic. Hand this to any development team.** **Prepared:** July 23, 2026. **Marrenne is the platform name. Internal working document, not for external distribution.** --- ## 0. How to use this document Every user-facing word in Marrenne comes from here. A developer does not write, reword, capitalize, pluralize, or translate any label or line. If a screen needs a string that is not in the glossary (Section 7), stop and ask; do not invent one. This is the companion to Part 1 (Visual and UI); read both. Cross-reference: the authoritative source for voice is `Module 3 - Identity System/Marrenne_Module3_MAR-34_Brand_Guidelines_LOCKED.md` Section 8, and `Naming & Positioning/Marrenne_Module1_Verbal_Identity_and_Messaging.md`. This document assembles what a build needs. --- ## 1. The brand-versus-interface boundary (load-bearing) The name is poetry; the button still says plain words. There are two language layers and they never cross. - **Plain side (buttons, tabs, labels, nav, fields):** functional nouns and verbs. Add to bag, Bag, Checkout, Search, Sign in, Settings. If she has to interpret a word before she can act, it is on the wrong surface. - **Brand side (welcome, notifications, empty states, editorial):** the house voice, the assumption of shared history, a specific fact that faces her. **Two failures, both banned:** - Poetry leaking into function: a button labeled "Summon," a wardrobe renamed "The Vault," checkout renamed "The Threshold." - Commerce leaking into voice: "Your cart is waiting," "Don't miss out," "Only 2 left, 14 people viewing." --- ## 2. Voice **House voice (default).** Quiet "we," or no pronoun at all. The system never pretends to be a person. The precision of the match carries the warmth. Example: *"The coat you've been waiting for. Your size, just arrived."* **Human-associate voice (permitted overlay).** First person, personal, used only when a real named person genuinely did the work and is clearly attributed. Example: *"I pulled these for you."* **The name never takes verbs of feeling or judgment.** Not "Marrenne loves this," not "Marrenne picked these." The name behaves as a place: found on Marrenne, kept in Marrenne. It does not verb ("I marrenned it" is wrong). It never appears in an exclamation. --- ## 3. The four acceptance tests (every line passes all four) 1. **The direction test.** Does the line face her or the room? Care faces her. *"Low in your size, and we know you've been watching it"* faces her. *"Only 2 left, 14 people viewing"* faces the room. Usable check: could this exact sentence be pasted into another user's screen unchanged and still fit? If yes, it faces the room. Cut it or make it specific. 2. **Demonstrate, never claim.** The selection or the finished list proves the relationship; it is never announced in adjectives. 3. **Never narrate what she can already see.** If the title, structure, imagery, or data already shows it, delete the line rather than rewrite it warmer. 4. **Earned warmth** (Section 4). --- ## 4. Earned warmth (when the brand smiles) A single specific line, offered once, only after the product has actually done something for her, reporting a true particular she could not see at a glance. Rare by rule. Silence is the default. **A moment qualifies only when both are true:** (1) the product just completed a real action or computed a true insight, and (2) the line states a concrete particular of her actual situation that the screen does not already show. If either is missing, stay silent. **Permitted moments:** a trip is fully planned; every outfit assigned; packing list complete; a forgotten essential caught; a shopping gap resolved or all gaps clear; one piece found to work across several days; a return resolved with a correct size prediction. **Silent by rule (never warm here):** payments, errors, privacy, consent, sizing uncertainty, refund delays, brand disputes, any operationally sensitive moment, and all empty or first-run states. **Approved examples (the standard to match):** - *"Everything's packed, including the wrap for the terrace dinner."* - *"Nothing left to source."* - *"The cream trouser works across three of your five days."* - *"The terrace dinner runs cool after sunset. A wrap is on your list."* **Rejected (and why):** *"Travel-worn but composed"* (a mood label, earned by nothing); *"Polished, prepared, and ready for Paris"* (generic, pasteable into any trip); *"Three dinners. One very good dress."* (the staccato countdown cadence, banned by the kill-list). --- ## 5. Kill-list **Semantic (never in brand-voice copy):** new, disruptive, novel; transactional commerce phrases in the brand voice (fine as plain UI nouns); aspiration-as-ascent (elevate, ascend, summit); luxury clichés (luxe, atelier, maison, edit, curate); puns. **Punctuation and spelling:** no em dashes (use a comma, a full stop, or restructure); US spelling throughout; no exclamation points in brand-register copy. **Phonetic (for any coined language, feature name, etc.):** flowing and soft, favor vowels and liquid consonants; no hard-consonant or staccato feel, no enterprise-security sound, no SaaS silhouette, no celestial or horoscope drift. --- ## 6. Casing and spelling standard (fixes the errors seen in the build) 1. **Headings and titles are sentence case.** "Packing list," not "Packing List" and not "PACKING LIST." (Where a component applies uppercase visually via CSS `text-transform`, the stored string stays sentence case.) 2. **Nav items are single capitalized nouns:** Home, Inquiries, Wardrobe, Recommendations, Trips, Orders, Returns, Settings. 3. **Proper nouns entered as content use correct Title Case for the proper noun, sentence case for the rest.** "New York Fashion Week 2028," never "New york fashion week 2028." "Fall-Winter 2027," "Pre-Fall 2026," "Spring-Summer 2026," "Resort 2026," "Milan Fashion Week 2026." Brand and house names keep the house's own casing (EMPORIO ARMANI, Prada, Michael Kors, Khaite render per the house; do not force a global uppercase). 4. **No trailing or double spaces; no straight-vs-curly quote drift; use a single consistent apostrophe.** 5. **US spelling and conventions throughout.** **Content-entry rule:** season, collection, and brand names are data and must be entered and displayed exactly per this casing standard. The system must not auto-lowercase or auto-uppercase them. If a data source arrives mis-cased, it is corrected on entry, not displayed as-is. --- ## 7. The locked string glossary Use these exact strings. Do not reword, re-case, or pluralize. Every item below is locked as of July 24, 2026; there are no open label decisions. ### 7.1 Primary navigation (consumer) | Function | String | Status | |---|---|---| | Home / index | Home | locked | | Inquiries surface | Inquiries | locked (MAR-32) | | Saved wardrobe surface | Wardrobe | **locked** (July 25). The consumer-facing term is Wardrobe, ruled July 20 over "closet" (business plan taxonomy 5.2, Module 1, Module 4, MAR-117). The current build showing "Closet" is a bug to fix. | | Per-location container (internal schema only) | Closet | Internal vocabulary for a location container inside the wardrobe. Not a consumer label. Whether it ever surfaces in app copy is governed by MAR-117. | | Recommendations surface | Recommendations | locked (MAR-32). The singular "Recommendation" in the current build is a bug; use the plural. | | Sign-in entry | Sign in | **locked** (July 24). | | Create-account entry | Create account | **locked** (July 24). Not "Sign Up." | ### 7.2 Commerce and interface controls (plain side) | Function | String | Status | |---|---|---| | Add item to bag | Add to bag | **locked** (July 24, sentence case). Not "Add to Bag." | | Cart / bag | Bag | locked | | Proceed to pay | Checkout | locked | | Search | Search | locked | | Settings | Settings | locked | | Orders | Orders | locked | | Returns | Returns | locked | | Sizes | Sizes | locked | | Packing list | Packing list | locked | | Trips | Trips | locked | | See all in a group | View all | locked (build currently shows "View All"; use sentence case "View all") | | Add a photo (secondary button in a plate well) | Add a photo | locked | | Remove / clear a photo (caption area, never on the image) | Clear | locked | ### 7.3 Empty-state lines (house voice, Canela Text Light, centered on the axis) — locked verbatim | Surface | Exact line | |---|---| | Inquiries | No inquiries yet. Ask about any piece, and the conversation is kept here. | | Wardrobe | Begin with one piece you love. The rest follows. | | Recommendations | No recommendations yet. As your profile grows, what fits you will find its way here. | Do not add a fourth empty-state line without founder sign-off. Do not place a photo, illustration, or placeholder box in any empty state (see Part 1, Section 7.B). ### 7.4 Earned-warmth lines Only the four approved lines in Section 4 are locked. Any new earned-warmth line is written to the Section 4 rules and confirmed by the founder before it ships. Never auto-generate these. --- ## 8. Acceptance checklist (copy, run before every delivery) - [ ] Every user-facing string appears in the glossary (Section 7) with matching spelling and casing; nothing reworded or invented. - [ ] "Recommendations" is plural everywhere; no singular "Recommendation." - [ ] The saved-wardrobe surface is labeled Wardrobe, used consistently; Closet is never used as a consumer label. - [ ] Sign-in entry uses the confirmed strings, consistently. - [ ] Season, collection, and brand names display in correct Title Case ("New York Fashion Week 2028"), never auto-cased. - [ ] No em dashes; US spelling; no exclamation points in brand-voice copy. - [ ] No commerce-urgency copy anywhere ("Only 2 left," "Don't miss out," "Your cart is waiting"). - [ ] The name never verbs and never carries feeling ("Marrenne loves this" is absent). - [ ] Empty states use the exact locked lines; no invented warmth over empty, error, payment, or consent states. - [ ] Every shipped line passes the four acceptance tests (Section 3). --- ## 9. Copy decisions — resolved July 24, 2026 (fully locked) All three prior open items are ruled and applied above: 1. Saved-wardrobe surface label: **Wardrobe**. "Closet" is internal schema only (a per-location container inside the wardrobe), never a consumer label. Aligns with the business plan taxonomy (July 20 ruling) and MAR-117. 2. Sign-in strings: **Sign in** and **Create account**. Not "Log In / Sign Up." 3. Control-label casing: **sentence case** ("Add to bag," "View all"). Components may still render UPPER visually via CSS `text-transform` where the type scale specifies it; the stored string stays sentence case. This document has zero open copy decisions. The dev firm has nothing left to improvise. --- Marrenne, Inc. · Development Build Specification, Part 2 · internal working document, not for external distribution.