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Guide: Writing Speech Bubbles and Prompts

The following guide will provide you with tips on capturing the campaign voice and maximizing the effectiveness of prompts.

Design Tiles

The design title should always start with “Let’s talk about”, followed by the smallest form possible to communicate the theme clearly. The title should not end with a period or any other type of punctuation.

Examples

  • Let’s talk about shapes ✔
  • Let’s talk about the shapes ✘
  • Let’s talk about shapes. ✘

Speech Bubbles

 

The copy in the speech bubbles should not be longer than five or six words and should always end with punctuation. Again, the copy should always be in the smallest form that is still clear. Speech bubbles fall into a few categories:

Questions

Questions should provide an opening for further discussion. Rather than generating a simple yes or no response, questions should easily lead in to potential follow-up questions and help spur conversation. Questions should always end with a question mark.

Examples

  • What lives underwater? ✔
  • What lives underwater ✘
  • What else do you think lives underwater? ✘

Statements

Statements should be used to encourage a conversation or activity. They should never be used simply to point something out. Statements should always end with a period.

Examples

  • Let’s sing a bath song. ✔
  • Let’s sing a bath song ✘
  • Let’s sing a song about the bath. ✘
  • Singing is fun. ✘

Sentence Starters

Sentence starters are used as a way to start a conversation—especially when a statement or a question would contain too many words. Sentence starters should always be intentionally open-ended to encourage the conversation to go in numerous different directions. Sentence starters should always end with an ellipsis.

Generally, when constructing items with this system, it is also good to keep in mind the age of the child. For younger children it’s helpful to include speech bubbles that enable the caregiver to carry more of the conversation than the child. For example, songs and instructions are more helpful in these cases. When a child is older and able to respond, questions are more helpful, as they encourage the child to play a larger role in the conversation. There should always be a mix of items so that a piece doesn’t contain just one type of speech bubble over and over.

Examples

  • Today I saw the colors… ✔
  • Today I saw the colors ✘
  • Today I saw the colors blue, red, green… ✘

Non-Speech Bubble Designs

On pieces that are separate from the actual design, try to be as clear as possible while maintaining a friendly tone. Sentences and paragraphs should always be constructed to be easy to read in terms of length as well as the complexity of words used.

Examples

  • (on three separate pieces) 1. Wash 2. Rinse 3. Dry ✔
  • first you wash, then you rinse, then you dry. ✘
  • 1.bathtime 2.is 3.fun ✘

Non-Design Copy

On pieces that are separate from the actual design, try to be as clear as possible while maintaining a friendly tone. Sentences and paragraphs should always be constructed to be easy to read in terms of length as well as the complexity of words used.