Developed Spanish style guide to standardize tone, terminology, and formatting
Jul. 2025–
Sept. 2025
UX Writer
Translator
MyHQ+ is KUBRA’s billing and payment portal. Because Spanish content came from several sources, it lacked consistency in tone, terminology, and formatting.
I created the Spanish (U.S.) style guide to establish one clear standard for translators, Lokalise AI, designers, engineers, and QA.
During a full audit of MyHQ+ Spanish content across dashboards, AutoPay flows, SMS notifications, and account settings, I noticed recurring issues:
Our teams needed a single reference that defined how Spanish works for MyHQ+ and that supports both everyday UX writing and scalable machine translation.
Spanish-speaking users in the U.S. aren’t all the same, so the content had to be clear and neutral. The guide also needed to follow U.S. billing formats that people recognize.
After reviewing how major LatAm utility companies communicate in Spanish, one pattern stood out: They overwhelmingly use tú in their digital experiences.
It’s clearer, friendlier, and aligns with how Spanish-speaking customers expect to interact with online billing tools.
Adopting tú gave MyHQ+ a consistent, modern tone across dashboards, notifications, and flows.
Although the language is Spanish, MyHQ+ is a U.S. product. This means using the following formats:
Making this explicit in the guide reduced confusion, errors, and back-and-forth in design reviews and QA.
Because MyHQ+ doesn’t collect gender and names are not reliable indicators, we replaced gendered constructions (“Bienvenido, Joe”) with neutral, respectful alternatives (“Hola, Joe”).
This avoids misgendering, supports nonbinary users, and creates a consistent experience across the platform.
The guide needed to improve Lokalise AI output while still being readable for our vendor and internal teams. That meant writing rules that were:
The result: fewer translation requests, less rework, and higher-quality translations from the start.
Working on the style guide reinforced that tone, pronouns, and formatting aren’t just writing preferences—they directly shape the product experience. Choosing tú, using U.S. formatting, and removing gendered language made our translations not only more consistent, but more usable and welcoming for the people relying on KUBRA for billing and payments.
The most impactful part of this project wasn’t fixing individual strings, it was creating a shared system that translators, engineers, designers, and Lokalise AI could all rely on. A clear foundation speeds up workflows and ensures translations remain consistent no matter who touches the content.