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I'm in agreement with all the examples except #4. "Something went wrong" sounds purposely vague and almost like baby-talk to me. "An error occurred" is more con

I'm in agreement with all the examples except #4. "Something went wrong" sounds purposely vague and almost like baby-talk to me. "An error occurred" is more concrete, indicating there's a specific problem that someone could put their finger on, and eventually fix. Also, "We're here to help" sounds vapid and self-congratulatory, like all the "We're here for you" messages we're getting bombarded with during the pandemic. "Contact us for assistance" gets to the point and focuses on the action to take.

rhn_mk1 6y ago
"An error occured" is not much of an improvement though. To me, it sounds like "A thing went wrong", with some specifity implied, but in the end the speaker withholds the information from you (perhaps because they have no idea themselves). A more concrete example would actually tell me what went wrong, so that I can try to solve it, or it would give me a lead to get some help (like some reference I can take to the support channel to get help with my issue).