[jtheory]

"Having a personality" is going to happen whatever you do.

Somewhat counterintuitively, this doesn't mean your interface pretends it's a person; but all copy is written by people -- words are used by people only (pretty much), directly or indirectly -- and the words chosen are projecting some personality onto the application whether you want to or not.

There are no words/phrases/instructions without baggage, connotations, etc..

[olliesaunders]

I have no objection to that. I just don’t want those words written by people to make it sound like the application is a person. The app can talk about itself doing things (it does do things after all) but not as a human being with feelings and stuff.