How to get users to read error messages?

Question

If you program for a nontechnical audience, you find yourself at a high risk that users will not read your carefully worded and enlightening error messages, but just click o

Answer 1

Depending on your user base, writing funny/rude/personal error messages can work great.

For instance, I wrote an application which allowed our HR people to better track the hire/fire dates of employees. [we were a small company, very laid back].

When they entered wrong dates I would write:

Hey dumb ass, learn how to enter a date!

EDIT: Of course a more helpful message is to say: "Please enter date as mm/dd/yyyy" or perhaps in code to try and figure out what they entered and if they entered "blahblah" to show an error. However, this was a very small application for an HR person I knew personally. Hence again people, read the first line of this post: Depending on your user base...

I recently worked on an Art Institute project, so the error messages were geared towards the audience, such as:

Most art before the Baroque period was unsigned. However, we’re beyond the Baroque period now, so all fields must be completed.

Basically gear it to your audience if at all possible, and avoid boring as all unearthly general errors such as: "please enter email" or "please enter valid email".