How to write the text for a tile

A tile gives you a square, a circle of usable space inside it, and about six lines. That is the entire canvas. Most people start by writing a sentence and then trying to squeeze it in. It works far better the other way round.

Start with the person, not the phrase

Before writing anything, answer one question: what would this person recognise as theirs? Not what is true about them, and not what is nice about them. What is theirs. A phrase they repeat, a habit everyone teases them about, the thing their kitchen is famous for.

That answer is almost always more specific and more interesting than a compliment. “The best mother in the world” is true of a great many mothers. “Nobody leaves this house hungry” is true of one.

How much actually fits

The text sits inside a round field, which has a consequence worth understanding before you write. The middle lines have the full width of the circle to play with. The top and bottom lines run across the narrow part of it, so they have to be shorter, and a long first line will force the whole design smaller to make room.

• Six lines is the practical maximum. Three or four is where most good tiles land.
• Keep the first and last line short. Two or three words is ideal.
• Put the longest line in the middle, where there is the most room.
• Fewer lines means bigger type. A two-line tile reads from across the room; a six-line one does not.
• A blank line between two thoughts is allowed and often better than punctuation.

Break lines where the voice breaks

Read your text out loud and notice where you naturally pause. Break the lines there. A line break is a beat, and if it lands in the wrong place the whole thing stumbles when read.

The classic version of this is the joke tile, where the last line is the punchline and has to sit alone. Put anything else on that line and the timing dies.

Short beats clever

The temptation is to be witty. Resist it slightly. A tile is read hundreds of times by the same person over years, and a joke that is a little too pleased with itself gets tiring in a way a plain, true sentence never does.

The test: would you still like this line on a Tuesday morning in February? Warmth ages well. Cleverness ages at about the speed of a birthday card.

Names, dates and the full-sentence trap

Names and dates are the strongest thing you can add, and the easiest to get wrong. Decide on a single format and stick to it: either “Anna & Sam, 2011” or “Anna and Sam, since 2011”, not a mixture. Check the spelling of a name even when you are certain, because you are checking for a typo, not for ignorance.

Avoid full sentences with subordinate clauses. They need punctuation to work, and punctuation on a tile looks like clutter. Break the sentence into fragments instead, or cut it down until it survives without commas.

The usual mistakes

1. 1Writing the whole message and then hoping it fits. Write to the space instead.
2. 2Six long lines. Technically possible, visually unreadable.
3. 3ALL CAPS for emphasis, which flattens the line rather than raising it.
4. 4Copying a saying without checking what it means, especially in Dutch.
5. 5An exclamation mark. Ceramic is already emphatic enough.
6. 6Not reading it aloud once before ordering. Ten seconds, catches most problems.

Lines you can steal

These are written to the shape described above: short opener, longer middle, short close. Take any of them as they are, or use one as a frame and change the specifics.

If you would rather start from something traditional, the Dutch sayings have four centuries of editing behind them and most of them are already the right length: see famous Dutch tile proverbs or browse the full collection of tile wisdom. When you have your lines, put them on a quote tile and check the preview before you order.