As you can see in a small example here:
https://github.com/elkarte/Elkarte/pull/286
Why be so formal, after all? When we could let go a bit and adjust the tone of the messages to be more friendly.
If it's okay, feel free to do so, for existing messages or future messages. I'm not good at it, but if we just make a few precedents perhaps nicer ideas will come out.
Mixed feeling about that...
To me be less formal is fine, but I've seen some (well, one that I remember of at the moment but I cannot find it... lol) pretty "annoyed" comments at sm.org about that (along the lines of: "can you stop with those stupid error messages?").
Of course someone can always maintain an "english_why_so_serious" version with the completely professional adaptation. :P
To me some of our existing error strings were written so a programmer would understand what was expected, but they may not as useful to the general user or may come across a little caustic / abrupt... Maybe this test, if we can prefix any error string with "Dumbass, " and it still reads fine, then maybe we should change it :P
Let me put it this way:
When I go on the interwebz (which I do too much, bah, time eater), I sometimes get an error - a missing page, something. Rare, but it can happen on any site. As a user, the meaning is clear to me whether it's a dry " 404 - not found" or a "Ouch, 500. Hey, that's an error. We don't know what happened, but here's what you can do: [...]". In both cases, there isn't much detail for the user (it's not going to give you a stack trace :) - not intently anyway), but I think it's cool when the message is on a lighter tone, slightly laughing at the oops that happened.
Just food for thought. :)