The Herbert Negative is used in response to a strong two opening bid. The cheapest suit bid made by responder is artificial, showing 0-7 points without support for opener's suit. Opener's rebids are natural.

The traditional negative response to a strong two is 2NT, which usually takes up a lot of space and wrongsides the play of the hand in notrumps. On the other hand, if playing Herbert Negatives responder must jump in a suit to show it naturally if bidding it at the cheapest level would be a Herbert Negative.